Desmond blinked and moved his hand away from the face.

The girl, petite and red-haired, who sat at the bar counter right in front of him and watched him closely the entire time he tried his best to stifle a yawn, reluctantly turned her gaze to the misty glass he continued to wipe. The napkin in his hand – or it just seemed so to her, – was already quite damp, and she doubted it was able to dry the glass effectively, but he seemed to be completely oblivious to this fact, rubbing it somehow mechanically, as if his thoughts were elsewhere, far from that glass.

"Did you have a hard night, mister˟?"

Desmond blinked again, but this time he really came back to reality, and his gaze locked on the girl.

"Excuse me?"

"You look like you're going to fall asleep right here, in front of me." The girl peeked into her own glass to see if there something left from her drink. The bartender gave up trying to wipe the water drops from the glass and put it back on the counter. "So, did you have a hard night?"

"It was just the same as always, young lady. I have to work until late, and I return to it early on the next morning."

The girl smiled mischievously.

"Isn't it weird for such a handsome man to be always so lonely, especially when you have such a cute face. Were you spending some quality time with a nice girl?"

She gave him a wink, but Desmond pretended he didn't get the hint – the woman was already quite drunk and was eager to try to have some flirty fun, but he wasn't going to play along with her too much to give her any hope. She was quite attractive, sure, but she wasn't to his taste.

"No, young lady," he answered, hiding the glass under the counter, putting it on the shelf with a dozen glasses, already wiped clean. "This night, I woke up at four AM when I heard some explosions outside the window, and then I couldn't bring myself to fall asleep again. Half of Manhattan had to wake up from that sound, I guess."

"Didn't hear anything like it."

"Do you live elsewhere?"

"On the other end of the island," the girl said. She stopped examining the leftovers of her cocktail at the bottom of the glass. "But I heard about something like that, in the morning news. They say the military launched a strike at some house."

"The military? Right here, in the city center? Why so?"

The girl shuddered a little as if she was trying to shake herself awake.

"Make me another one, like the previous," she moaned, raising her head a little and supporting it with her hand. "Can't discuss such rumors when I'm sober. The one with a sweet cherry."

"Shirley Templar?"

"Yep."

Desmond reached under the counter, pulling out a glass – perhaps, the same one he'd been wiping a few minutes ago. Placing it on the counter, he turned his back to her, his eyes searching among the bottles displayed on the shelves along the wall for the ones he needed at the moment.

"I think I understand why the hell the bar is called "Bad Weather"," the girl's voice rang out as soon as he turned away. "I'm not even that drunk yet, but I already feel like storming out."

"Maybe, you'd prefer something less strong then, young lady?"

"No," she said, pushing the empty glass away. "I come here exclusively for that Templar of yours and for the sake of taking a look at the skillful guy who mixes it. Otherwise, I would mix wódka˟˟ with lemonade back at my home and would be entirely pleased with that."

Desmond chuckled to himself. That cocktail seemed to never let him down. His customers loved it, but it was particularly cherished by women – perhaps, because of its excessively sweet taste, which hid the bitterness of gin quite well.

"How could I say no, young lady." Finally, having found both bottles with colorful liquids, one with almost transparent yellow ginger ale and another with grenadine inside, he turned around to face the girl. "Especially when that kind of cocktail suits so well to your hair˟˟˟."

He smiled widely, and the girl smiled back, very pleased with the compliment. She rested the head on her hands again, watching Desmond hastily hiding the glass under the counter and retrieving another one, with more outstretched top.

"Forgive me, young lady, I picked wrong one. I was that astounded by your charming look," he said, pouring ale into a glass in such a way so the splashes won't spill on the counter. "Call nine-one-one, I'd say."

Miles gave her another playful wink, looking straight at her and barely keeping an eye on grenadine so he won't spill it over the side of the glass. After the girl's compliment, he had a certain desire to impress her a little more. To have a regular customer meant better money for him, and he could even earn some tips. Desmond didn't have to share the latter with bar owner, so he made every possible effort to get them.

"Here you go, young lady," he said, pushing the weirdly shaped glass towards her, and hastily threw a cherry into it. "This one is on the expense of our bar."

Sure, it wasn't an actual Shirley Templar, just a Shirley Temple, but Desmond wasn't going to tell her about it. He just couldn't stand the thought she was actually consent with getting drunk as much while using this cocktail as an excuse to flirt with him a little longer.

The redhead took the glass in hands and peered into it, staring at the sweet cherry that had floated up, its stem sticking out of the liquid.

"I heard those guys in black uniforms, the ones you could see at the checkpoints near the bridges, weren't posted there for no reason. There's also a rumor that the island can be closed – nobody's in or out, – but no one knows why so. Maybe, it has something to do with those odd outbreaks of some kind of disease in Gramercy – the place is literally littered with soldiers.

She halved the contents of the glass in a few sips and put it back on the counter.

"And now you tell me about another accident. I don't like it all, really. My guess is, the military just found out about another source of that infection and dealt with it in their usual way."

"You do think some of these rumors could be true?"

The girl's head lowered. She caught the cherry by the stem and frantically pushed it back and forth along the rim of nearly emptied glass until it finally fell inside and drowned in the thickened ale.

"Not all of them, but some," she responded. "Ah, to hell with that all. I'll try to leave the island the next day. I have no desire to stay here as long as the military is around, who knows what they will be up to the next moment. Take my advice – do exactly the same."

When he finally closed the backdoor leading to the bar, the one reserved for employees, it was already quite dark outside. Not a big surprise, the Bad Weather was open for business until the last customer, and the red-haired girl was too addicted to his presence to him to let him go earlier. Besides, he also had to tidy up at the bar area before going home. The chatty customer of his wouldn't be too happy to see him fiddling around with the mop while she was still sitting in the same room, her gaze locked on his all this time, and the sweeping also took some of his time. Maybe, not as much of it, but it was the time he could have spent resting from her bothersome attention.

Also, it wouldn't hurt to get some sleep, after all. And to change properly, without having to throw a hoodie over the work shirt. Right now, it was folded uncomfortably under his clothes, forcing him to tug at it from time to time to straighten it.

Desmond slipped the key into the pocket. Thank God, he didn't have to change his jeans to something more fancy before his shift, since no customer could see what pants he was wearing from behind the height of the counter, so he didn't have to worry about forgetting the keys in another set of clothes. After a moment, he put his hand in there as well and, having pulled his hood low on the face, headed for a narrow alley end between two buildings, to where the backdoor of the Bad Weather was leading. Approaching the main street, he could hear some unpleasant noise. It sounded like a car engine – a very worn and neglected to that.

A second after Desmond had taken a few steps outside the alley and turned around the corner, he heard some rather loud gunshots. It would be difficult for him to confuse this particular sound with any other. When he was still a little boy and lived on a so-called "farm" in the South Dakota, there were times when his father tried to teach him to disarm an opponent armed with a gun. It didn't go well – the last time when he made an honest attempt to knock the gun out of his father's hand, all he managed to do was making William accidentally pull the trigger and shoot a hen unlucky enough to take a stroll on the lawn in front of the building, and that was the end of the exercise.

After that, he did spent some time sobbing over that luckless hen, feeling sorry either for her or for himself, for his father gave him quite a thrashing for such a childish attempt, once again reminding him about the threat coming from the Templars, the mere mention of whose was already making Desmond sick.

Miles twitched a little and winced when that memory was brought up in his mind. Or, maybe, he winced because it was already somewhat cold enough, and he heard a loud sound of the quick footsteps somewhere ahead of him, as if someone was running away from who knows what.

The sounds were approaching quite fast, but Desmond barely could see anything in the semi-darkness, and the lonely streetlamp on his side of the street he was currently walking towards, instinctually quickening his pace, wasn't making things much better. The sounds worried him a little; it was already quite late at night, and God only knows what could happen to him under such conditions.

The sounds were already quite audible, as was the intrusive rattling. He was constantly hearing it from the moment he had left the Bad Weather. Desmond stopped spontaneously, hiding in the darkness a few feet away from the lantern, and froze in place, hoping for the running person to pass by him, not paying him any attention.

He did so quite in time – the next moment he unexpectedly felt someone's hand roughly grabbing him by the collar and jerking him up and off the ground. Someone pulled him closer to them and turned him around sharply, lifting him in the air in one quick motion.

Desmond yelped, slightly disoriented and unable to do anything but dangle weakly in that grip. Weird enough, until this moment he thought the mysterious person was going to run past him for certain, as well as they couldn't see or reach him in any way. But here he was at the moment – someone grabbed him by his clothes and quickly dragged him along, making their way back and around the corner, heading for the Bad Weather, holding him slightly above the ground, as if they were going to...

Throw him somewhere. Or at something.

"Hey, dammit!" Desmond clutched at his arm. For some reason, he thought the attacker was male, and he knew he was damn right when his fingers felt the roughed skin just slightly below the leather sleeve. "Let me go, you jerk!"

The man didn't listen to him. He shook the bartender, as if trying to get him to release his arm and keep him in a position convenient for a throw, but Desmond dug his nails into his skin, clawing at it like an angry cat and letting him know he won't allow it.

"Stop that, bitch˟˟˟˟," he hissed, shaking him a little harder this time, but he had to stop and lower his hand a bit to do so. "Sto–"

Desmond used that pause to kick him hard in the stomach. Sure, he could hardly see even the very man holding him in that semi-darkness, moreover, he could hardly determine the part of the body a direct blow to which would be more effective, but he tried to aim for the midsection of the figure and, judging by the cry the man made, he didn't miss.

"Son of a bitch!"

Caught off guard by the strike, the man unclutched his hand, and Desmond fell flat on his ass, not expecting his attack to be successful. But he didn't stay on the ground for long and jumped aside – or rather, quickly rolled to the side and jumped to his feet, as soon as he noticed the man coming back to his senses and trying to approach him again. Or rather, to grab him again, rushing at him like a wild cat.

"Leave me alone, you prick!"

Maybe, it was the first time, since he ran away from the compound, when Desmond truly regretted he didn't carry his hidden blade with him. Today, he left it back at home once again, it was safely hidden in his backpack, sewn into the inside layer so his too curious elderly landlady wouldn't be accidentally find it. But right now, the best place for that blade would be on his arm, as the man was getting even closer to him while he was backing away until his shoulder blades collided with the solid wall.

"Shut your mouth," the stranger said. Now his voice sounded a little calmer, as if he realized his cries were only scaring him more, and reached out for him, perhaps, with the intention of either really shutting his mouth, or grabbing him by the clothes again. "I won't do anything to you if you won't scream."

Of course, Desmond didn't believe him, he had no intention to believe the person who just caught him like that and dragged him to somewhere, aiming to do something to him, something he definitely wouldn't like. He tensed, moving his foot forward a little, so he could kick him in the groin if he got close enough for him to perform the strike and use it to finally break free.

The weird noise, that sound similar to the rumble of a broken engine he was vaguely hearing the entire time, grew even louder with every second and now was almost deafening him. Feeling the fear squeezing his throat unpleasantly, Desmond realized that the sound he was hearing at the moment wasn't the sound of a car at all, but of a real helicopter hovering over them. He could almost distinct the blades spinning rapidly, making him feel sick, and even saw the pilot raising some kind of a square-shaped device to his mouth – the heli was that close to them.

Of course, the helicopter didn't fly up to them unnoticed. Perhaps, it was the exact source of the rattling he heard a minute ago. They both, he and that weird man, just were too busy fighting each other to notice how it got so close to them.

The man turned around to face the helicopter just in time when the lights turned on, blinding Desmond for a second even though the man was casting his shadow on him, hiding him from the light a bit. The bartender sharply moved his hands to his face, trying to cover the eyes, and a second later he heard:

"I see the target. Should I open fire?"

NOTES

˟The original word was панич / panych, which is an old word, sometimes used in Polish and Ukrainian. It means male counterpart to miss or young lady – a young unmarried man (so the girl just points out that Des is single). Not sure if such a word exists in modern English, so I picked mister.

˟˟Yes, I do know there is the word vodka in English, but it is Russian origin, so I changed it to authentic Polish word. For me, any Russian word is strongly associated with constant 9/11 I currently live in, so bear with me, please. Btw, vodka (rectified alcohol often made of beetroot sugar) was actually invented by the Poles who call it wódka or gorzałka (spelled as voodka and gozhalka, respectively) – now you know more!

˟˟˟The girl was written based on the look of Kateryna "Birdie" Polishchuk, the Ukrainian volunteer paramedic. Катерино, вибачте мені за це, але Ви надто класна, і я Вас обожнюю 3

˟˟˟˟The original word is курва / kurwa, which is a widely used Ukrainian and Polish profane word and can mean either fuck, whore or bitch (depending on the context), so I just picked less hurtful (for Des) one.