"I can't believe you already have your office done." Rachel said to Nina as I walked into our new office building in Queens.

"You know, it's easy to get people to do things for me." Nina responded.

"Yeah, it is. Hey, do you think I could take this office? We could be neighbors." I walked past Nina and Rachel.

"Good morning, Rachel." I greeted her and smiled. I couldn't get enough of hearing my own voice. It's been so long so I spoke and Cameron just swooped in and did something to me. I don't know what but it just made me want to speak. "Good morning, Nina."

"Morning, Angel." They both greeted me.

"Does anyone have the office at the end on the left?"

"Yeah, Dr. Rosen already called." Rachel said. "And Gary has the one on the right. Bill has the first one up by the elevator. There's two left next to Dr. Rosen's office." I made my way to the offices and looked into both of them.

"I'll take the bigger one."

"Man, I need to clean." I set my stuff down in my office and walked back out into the hallway to see Bill carrying a pop machine.

"Watch your back, ladies." Bill said as he groaned to set the machine down.

"You ok?"

"Gary, how's this?" Gary came out of his office and looked around for a second.

"No." Gary protested. "There's a hum. It's still humming."

"Gary, how can there be a hum? I haven't even plugged the damn thing in yet."

"There's a hum."

"I hear the flourlescent lightbulbs. Bill's stomach digesting his stomach. But no hum, Gary."

"There you go." Bill said.

"No." Gary said. "Yes. There's a hum in my head. I don't know where it's coming from. The old offices were perfect. There was no hum." Gary turned and went back to his office.

"I'm with Gary." I said. "Brooklyn I can understand, maybe. But Queens-"

"Hello, people. Someone tried to kill Dr. Rosen in the old office."

"You were trying to kill Dr. Rosen." Gary said.

"I was mind controlled, okay? Gary, this is where I put it. This is where it stays, okay? Drink up." Bill left the hallways to go to the bathroom.

"You can't leave that right there." Rachel protested before her cell phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket and hung up on the caller. The caller called back and Rachel went into her office and answered it.

"Bill?" Gary called for Bill. "Bill?" He opened the door the men's bathroom and called for Bill. "The humming is back. It's annoying."

"A little privacy, please." Bill said. The door to the offices opened and Cameron came in with a bow in his hand.

"Sorry I'm late." He muttered. "I, uh, had to drop my kid off." I involuntarily smiled at him.

"Your over here." I said and led him to his office that was next to mine. Nina followed behind.

"Not much of a view."

"Well, you show up late, you get what you get." Nina said. Cameron set his box down on the table, picked a baseball from the box and began to toss it from hand to hand as he sat down on the two seat couch.

"I, uh, not really sure what to do with an office."

"You could decorate. You're an ex-jock. Go for the sports stuff."

"Right. Seriously. What do we do all day? We just, uh, sit around having therapy sessions?"

"Sometimes. Most of the time we spend looking for other Alphas."

"When we find 'em?"

"We identify them, government tracks them and some go to the compound."

"Compound?" I shifted my weight uneasily thinking about that place.

"It's not its real name." Gary said, poking his head into the door. "She just calls it that. It's, uh, Binghamton's Special Research Facility." I clutched my head and gasped in pain as Gary neared me. Too many Alphas, too fast.

"Gary, take a few steps back please." I said and Gary did so. My brain relaxed and quickly raced to pick up Gary's ability and note it down.

"It's this place where they send Alphas who misuse their abilities." Nina explained the compound.

"A danger to self or others." Gary quoted something Lee said. "Dr. Rosen says that we don't have to worry about that." Gary sat down on the couch next to Cameron. "But you do. You do."

"Gary." I said.

"But we don't."

"Gary." He turned his head to look at me.

"Hmm?"

"It's nothing that you have to worry about." I reassured Cameron.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I pulled out of the parking lot of the office building and started driving when I saw Cameron walking on the sidewalk, hands stuffed in his jacket pockets. I stopped at the corner and pulled up the eye protection part of my helmet and looked over at him.

"Tough first day?" I asked him. He stopped and looked over to me before walking to the motorcycle's side. "It'll get better."

"My drill sergeant used to tell me the exact same thing." Cameron stated.

"Look. I know you're feeling pretty useless right now, but-"

"You don't know anything about me, Angel."

"Well, I know you have excellent hand eye coordination. And Rosen thinks you belong here. And I know you have a thing for me. Your aura says so." He looked down at me with loving blue eyes. "I'll see you, Hicks." I flipped my eye protection back down and turned the corner.

"Nice bike!"

"Nina borrowed it!"

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I sat at a table in the break room the next day. Rachel was to the right of me and Gary was to the left of me. Nina sat between Rachel and Gary. A brown hair woman started walking into the break and Bill got up and walked in her direction.

"Hi." The woman said. "I'm looking for Dr. Rosen."

"I don't know what Dr. Rosen told you over cocktails last night, but-" Bill began to speak but the woman cut him off.

"Cocktails?"

"Well know Dr. Rosen's got some game. Obviously."

"Oh, Bill Harken. Right. I'd shake but don't want any broken bones." She looked past Bill to the rest of us. "Miss Theroux, no eye contact, please. Miss Lattimer, I would appreciate it if you're about ten yards away from the others. Rachel-"

"Do we know you?" Nina snapped at her.

"Miss Sullivan, you're early." Lee came up behind the woman and she swung around to face him.

"Oh, well, we were all just getting acquainted." The woman walked further into the break room.

"Your cell phone is encrypted." Gary said.

"That's right, Gary. It is." A new alpha ability registered in my mind and I looked behind me to see Cameron walking in but the woman stopped him. "Mr. Hicks, just stay there. I don't want you or Miss Lattimer getting any ideas." I turned back around and glared at her.

"I don't like her." I said.

"Angel, please." Lee said. "Agent Sullivan is overseeing our group while Wilson is on assignment. Glad you're here."

"I'm not."

"Angel. We need to gather in the conference room. We've got a case. This way, please." Lee turned to go to the conference room but Sullivan stopped him.

"Uh, about that." She said. "You and I need to talk first in private." I glared at her as she and Lee left the break room together.

"I don't like her." I repeated. I stared off into space and went deep into thought.

"Uh-uh. Don't even think about it, Angel." Bill said and I snapped out of my trance and looked over at him.

"What?"

"You're thinking about using Hicks' ability to kill her." I squinted my eyes, pierced my lips and cocked my head to the side and stared back out into space as I thought.

"You got the killing part correct but I wasn't going to use Hicks' ability. I was going to use Nina's power."

"Why Nina's?"

"So I can make her drink a jug of bleach."

"Angel."

"I told you! I don't like her."

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"Marcus has the ability to predict and even control...cause and effetc in the physical world." Lee said as he explained the case once we all crowed around the conference room table. "He can create elaborate chains of events. Drop a coin and cause a car to crash. Pull one wire and ignite an entire building. So now you all know what I know. Just remember-Marcus's abilities make him unpredictable...and potentially extremly dangerous. So no unnecessary risks." Cameron got up with Lee and he walked out to get ready to go out into the field.

"Unnecessary risk." Gary repeated the two words. "How do you know if a risk is unnecessary? What's a necessary risk?"

"Gary, you're just gonna be scanning cell phones and street cameras, ok?" Bill said.

"Yeah, but I get headaches if I go too long."

"Well, that's pretty sick."

"Is that a necessary risk?" Gary began to walk out of the room with Bill behind him.

"You're gonna be okay, okay?"

"Is that an unnecessary risk?" That left Nina and me in the room with Lee. Nina stood up and faced Lee.

"Marcus has been on the loose for almost a day...and you don't even tell me?" Nina demanded from Lee.

"I know it always troubled you-the fact that I chose to send Marcus to Binghamton." Lee said and I shuddered at the awful word, memories coming back to me.

"Not as much as it bothered you. I always worried that, you know, I would be next. You know what happened to my boyfriend and what I made him do. I hurt someone. So has Lattimer, Hicks and Harken."

"Never intentionally."

"Yeah, but you're the one who gets to make that choice-who goes and who stays." I snapped at him.

"Angel, that's something I think about every day. I would have never taken you out of Binghamton if I thought you were dangerous."

"But I am dangerous. We all are expect for Rachel and Gary. How do you know that Nina, Cameron, Bill or myself are not going to slip up and kill someone?"

"Becuase I trust you."

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"Stargazer Lilies." Rachel stated, comparing evidence from a scene and a pitcure of a pink flower. "That's where the pollen came from."

"Ok, well, he could have picked that up from anywhere, right?" I questioned her.

"Hotels." Bill suggested. "Restraunts. Flower shops. Gary." Bill and I walked out of the office to run into Gary in the hallway. "I need you to do a search."

"I can't search any better than anyone else, Bill. I'm not google guy." Gary snapped at Bill.

"I know. But you are camera guy, right?" Gary looked down at his hands and fiddled with his fingers.

"Yeah."

"Right. So I need you to search cameras. Security cameras all over Manhattan."

"Yeah, I can do that. But which cameras, Bill? What am I looking for? Specificity."

"You're looking for Stargazer Lilies." I jumped in and spoke in a calme tone to try to calm Gary down.

"Stargazer Lilies."

"It's a flower. You got it?"

"Stargazer Lilies."

"Yes. Yes. Thank you." I turned to go get coffee but Gary came right back out of his office with an answer.

"Search parameters. Angel. Bill, you have to be more specific." Gary said as he headed into Lee's office where he was sitting on his couch looking through Marcus's file. Not all the Stargazer Lilies. Not all of Manhattan. Just the important parts."

"Yeah, ok." Bill muttered.

"Stargazer Lilies."

"The parts involved in the case, Gary." I said.

"Stargazer Lilies locations are set A. Places and people involved in the case are set B. We're looking for the intersection. The overlap."

"Ok, Gary. Did you find anything?" Bill asked, not caring about a word that Gary just said.

"Yeah, Bill, I did. It's what I do." Gary walked over to Lee's desk and sat down in his chair and tried to open Lee's laptop lid but it wouldn't open. "Office tower near the federal building. Dr. Rosen, I can't-" Lee got up from the couch and went over to the desk to help Gary open the laptop lid. "Stargazer Lilies in the lobby. Clay and his team working out of a temporary location upstairs."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Lee dragged us out of the office to a federal building. We walked to the main clearing in front of the building and saw Agent Clay standing in the center of the clearing. He must be a special kind of stupid if he thought Marcus wasn't going to hurt him. We walked up to a female agent who was watching Clay from nearby. She turned to us when she saw us coming.

"Clay. Unbelievable." She scoffed. "The guy's got a pair of brass ones."

"I'll give it to him." Cameron said. "He chose his ground well. Open space. No moving objects. Not a lot for Marcus to work with.

"The area's been cleared by-" Rachel started to speak as she looked around the area. "Clay's got snipers on the roof."

"This isn't going to work." Lee protested. "Clay's ambush. Marcus would have seen this thing over a mile away. It's too logical a countermove on our part."

"You sure about that, Doc?" Cameron questioned him. "You ask me, Clay makes a pretty tempting target out there."

"He's not gonna just walk into a trap. It's up to us to find out what his next move's gonna be."

"Rachel, Nina, you two are coming with me." Bill ordered. "Angel, you're gonna stay with Hicks. Fan out and move very slowly and carefully. If you see or hear anything, call us. Let's go. I need your eyes." I followed closely beside Cameron as we hurried to investigate the far right side of the building.

"What are they trying to do?" I asked Cameron as I saw agents moving closer to the center.

"Box him in." He answered. "I don't know. Maybe Rosen's right. Maybe he's playing us." I heard a scream from that distant and I immediately recognized it as Rachel.

"That was Rachel." I made a move to head towards the scream but as soon as I did a jet of flames rose up from the sewer next to me. I threw up my right arm to protect my face but Cameron was already there to push me up against the building and protect me with his body as more flames ignited in the sewers around us. Once he was sure that the last fire ignited, he took a step back and gripped my face in his hands, causing me to blush at his touch.

"Are you okay?" I quickly nodded and sighed as I started to drown in his blue eyes. His thumb brushed gently over my lips before he leaned down and collided his lips with mine. The contact of his lips sent ripples of heat through my cheeks and made my head pound with blood. He pulled away and looked down at me again. "We should get back to the others and see if they're alright." I nodded my agreement and he turned to walk back to the clearing with me behind him, the kiss still lingering on my lips.

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"Gary." Once we all met up, we got into the car to try to track down Marcus who had taken Lee. Rachel had called Gary to see if he could track down the SUV he was driving. "Yes, Gary, I know it's late. Listen. I need you to track down a black SUV, government plates. They just left the federal building a few minutes ago...Thank you, Gary. Hudson Bridge, Bill." Bill slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel all the way to the left, letting the car drift and straighten out before flooring on the gas. We pulled onto the bridge to see Marcus and Lee on the edge of the bridge with Marcus holding a knife to Lee's throat. We got out of the car and Bill pulled out his gun and pointed it at Marcus.

"Ayers!" Bill shouted at Marcus.

"Bill!" Lee yelled, calling him off. "No! It's not necessary! Please, put your gun down." Tires screeched and Clay showed up with his team. Marcus let go of Lee who ran back over to us as Marcus held his hands up in surrender. "Nathan, no!" Nathan fired a bullet into Marcus's left shoulder, making him fall over the edge and down into the river below.