Chapter 19
Kwan Residence
Angel Grove, CA
July 11, 2012
12:30 PM

"You people are dead already and you don't even know it."

A gentle warm breeze rustled through Trini's long, dark hair as she stepped out of Aisha's car onto the parking lot of her apartment building. The tense morning had given way to a bright, glistening afternoon, the California sun casting long, lazy shadows over the fading asphalt. Trini took a long, deep breath and sighed contentedly, letting the ocean-scented air fill her nostrils and relax her muscles.

"Y'know, someone as important as you ought to at least consider moving someplace a little nicer." Aisha's voice broke through Trini's reverie; she turned to regard her African-American companion across the roof of her car as the other woman swung her door shut. "This place is like three blocks down from crackhead alley."

Trini snorted but cracked a small smile. "For your information, Sha, not all of us are operating on dual incomes. Besides, I like it here. There's a nice view, it's close to everybody, and I'm usually out of town often enough that I never have the chance to get tired of it." She smiled for real this time and adjusted her purse strap on her shoulder. "And I'm nowhere near as important as you all think I am."

"Funny how you never hear that from someone who isn't actually important," Aisha teased, striding around the front of the car to sling an arm around Trini's hip. "Give yourself a little more credit, Tri. Apart from Mulder and Scully and Mr. Top Secret back there," she jerked a thumb over her shoulder to illustrate who she meant, "you're the closest thing we have to a real-life superhero."

"Says the firefighter," Trini shot back, pointing a playfully accusatory finger in Aisha's face. Aisha laughed.

"Hey girl, I don't need you stroking my ego. I got Rocky back home to stroke whatever I want."

"Hey, do I ruin your day with unnecessary sexual imagery?" Trini exclaimed with mock indignation. "If one of the boys told that joke you'd smack 'em upside the head."

"And you'll notice it hasn't stopped them," Aisha said. The two of them broke into laughter at that, but Trini quickly went silent when she saw a man emerge from the front door of her building. He was bald, stocky, and wearing a nondescript Henley and jeans, but what really drew her attention was the thick manila folder he carried under his arm.

"You know that guy?" Aisha asked, noticing Trini's silence.

"I've never seen him before," Trini answered, and moved forward to approach the man, but Aisha dug her fingers into her arm.

"Wait," she hissed. "Lower back."

Frowning, Trini glanced back at the man and noticed the small, almost invisible bulge in his shirt at the small of his back; when he turned to glance over his shoulder, the fabric pulled back to reveal a glimpse of something hard and black tucked into his waistband.

"Shit," Trini muttered. She looked around to make sure that she, Aisha and the man were the only people in the parking lot before pulling free of Aisha's grip and stepping in the man's direction. "Hey, excuse me?" She called out to him. He stopped, turned to look her square in the eye and almost immediately bolted across the parking lot.

"Stop! Hey, get back here!" Trini ran forward several steps but the man was still several yards away from her when he dove into a waiting SUV and threw the door shut. She made a move toward it, but before she got far the engine started and the car peeled out of the parking lot. "Damn it."

"You sure you'd never seen that guy before?" Aisha asked, coming up beside her.

"Yes," Trini said. "You get a look at the plate?"

"There was no plate," Aisha said solemnly. "So why would a guy with a gun stuffed in his pants who you've never seen before be coming out of your apartment building and driving off in a car with no plates?"

"I have a theory," Trini said quietly. She turned to look Aisha in the eye. "Did you notice the folder full of paper he was carrying?"

Aisha's eyes widened. "Shit. Come on." She grabbed Trini by the wrist. "We have to get inside."

Trini had the keys to her apartment out of her pocket and ready in her hand before they even reached the door, but as she and Aisha approached from the end of the hallway, it quickly became abundantly clear that they weren't going to need them. The door to her apartment had been blown practically off the frame; it dangled, in splinters, from the top hinge. The portion containing the knob and deadbolt was still jutting out of the wall, held in place by the still intact ledge; it terminated abruptly in a jagged edge about six inches around.

Trini's heart leapt into her throat. She darted through the doorway, turning sideways and leaning backward to avoid the sharp fragments, and turned back toward the hallway to find the light switch.

"Oh, no no no no," she muttered under her breath, turning in a small circle as she beheld the chaos that lay before her. Her entire apartment had been ransacked; chairs thrown over, drawers pulled out and their contents scattered on the floor, the cushions pulled from the couch and easy chairs and torn to shreds, stuffing littering every inch of the floor like some strange form of snow. The cupboards in the kitchen had been thrown open, and every piece of glassware, silverware, and cooking equipment had been tossed haphazardly aside, covering the kitchen tile in a layer of broken glass and bent metal an inch thick. Trini's expensive glass table had been upended and shattered, spilling still more broken glass across the floor. In all the destruction, though, Trini's gaze went straight for one thing: the pile of cardboard file boxes she had set to one side of the kitchen after her meeting with Adam the night before. They were still there, but the lids had been torn off, the boxes knocked over and every page inside was thrown out onto the floor into the living room. "Fuck me!" Trini raced over and began frantically gathering up papers off the floor.

"Whoa, whoa, Trini!" Aisha stumbled through the doorway, still trying to recover from her shock at the state of Trini's apartment, and trotted over behind her. "Are you crazy? One of them might still be here."

"And what, they just drove off and left him behind?"

"Isn't that what you said the guys at Tommy's house did?"

That was enough to get Trini to stop for a second. She shoved some glass fragments out of the way to clear a spot on the floor and set down the pages she'd collected. "OK, maybe you're right. Let's go check the bedroom."

Trini and Aisha opened every door and turned on every light in the apartment, but found no one lying in wait for them. As the two of them made their way back to the main room, Aisha glanced around again before turning to Trini.

"Does it look like anything's missing?"

"Kinda hard to tell, all these broken pieces kinda look the same," Trini grumbled in reply. "They didn't bother with the TV and stereo system and none of the jewelry in my bedroom was gone, so it doesn't scream robbery."

"So why would they come in here and wreck all your shit if they weren't gonna take –"

"I didn't say nothing was taken," Trini said, hastily organizing the papers and quickly glancing through them. Aisha narrowed her eyes at her. "Did you see what the guy was carrying?" Trini held up one of the half-empty boxes to show Aisha the inside, which still held a few manila folders full of various papers. "Look familiar?"

The folders were identical to the one the man had been carrying under his arm. Aisha blinked a couple of times and pointed into the box. "I'm guessing that's where you kept the, uh…"

"The printouts of the emails I showed Adam last night, yeah." Trini shoved the box aside and went back to gathering the loose papers off the floor. "I'm trying to figure out if any of them are still here."

Aisha got down on all fours next to Trini and reached for another pile of papers. "What's the folder labeled as?"

Trini sighed, frustrated. "It isn't," she said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "I wanted it to be inconspicuous so I just stuck 'em all in a blank folder." She grabbed a manila folder off the floor beside her. "It looks like this, though, if that helps. It's not one of the hanging ones." She held it up for Aisha to see. The other woman nodded and shoved a pile of the dark green hanging folders aside to focus on the beige ones.

"Any idea who those guys were?" Aisha asked, thumbing through a folder and tossing it back in the box.

"Well," Trini said, shifting to a seated position so she could skim papers more comfortably. "I have some theories, but nothing certain."

Aisha snorted and casually dropped another pile into the box, letting the slap of papers on plastic echo through Trini's empty apartment. "OK, well I'm pretty damn certain that you're further along with this thing than I am, so, you know…" she made a sweeping gesture in front of her. "If you don't mind."

Trini furrowed her brow and let a handful of papers flop into her lap. "The way I see it there are a couple possibilities. The most obvious one is that those guys came from the same place the guys who attacked Tommy and Kat's house came from." She glanced sideways at Aisha. "Where exactly that is is still a little up in the air, but, you know, one step at a time." She held up a finger to illustrate her point. "I was also thinking they may have been the same people the guy who wrote me those emails was talking about, but unless we find anything here that those guys left behind, there won't be a lot of information to go on there."

Aisha nodded. "OK, so what's behind Curtain #3?"

"This is where it gets tricky," Trini said. "We can't discount the possibility that the guys we just saw came from some other group that we still know nothing about yet."

Aisha grimaced. "Shit, that's a scary thought," she muttered. "OK, let's just set the nightmare scenario aside for a second." She dropped another stack of papers and reached for another. "It seems like way more than a coincidence to me that Tommy and Kat's house and your apartment get attacked by guys who look and act that similar within less than a day of each other. Which tells me that whoever these guys are, they all came from the same place."

"Makes sense," Trini said with a nod. "I had also noticed that…" She suddenly trailed off and Aisha glanced up curiously.

"Tri?" Trini was staring intently at a sparsely filled folder in her lap. "What's up? You find something?"

A grin broke out on Trini's face. "Something." She held up the papers for Aisha to see. "Not everything, but definitely something." Aisha took the papers from her and started rifling through them. "I think that's all that's left. It's maybe a quarter of what I had, but it's better than nothing."

"And it means either we scared them off or they didn't entirely know what they were looking for." Aisha frowned at one of the pages she was reading. "Damn, Tri, this is some creepy shit. We need to get this to Kim."

"Tell me about it," Trini said with a small laugh. Suddenly, she blinked several times and quickly got to her feet. "Hold on." She crossed the room to the counter where she'd set her phone and started unlocking it. "Tommy's house I can understand, he's a cop, he was working the case and he had a box full of evidence, and the police department would definitely have his address on file. But mine…" she flipped the phone around to show Aisha the screen, which showed a page of the online phone directory. "Neither my name, my phone number or my address are publicly available. Side effect of working for the UN, you never hold an address or a phone long enough to make a record of it."

Aisha restacked the papers, tucked them under her arm and stood up to join Trini at the counter. "OK, so?"

"So," Trini said, tapping her phone against her hip and glancing nervously at her door, which was still leaning loosely against the wall. "How the fuck did these creeps find out where I live?"


Billy Cranston's Apartment
12:30 PM

Tommy stood in the middle of Billy's apartment, arms folded over his chest, examining the destruction they had just wrought.

Three bodies lay sprawled on the kitchen floor, blood slowly pooling underneath them. The entire room was upended, utensils strewn across the floor, the table tossed unceremoniously aside from where the door hung loosely on only a single hinge. The fourth man, the one who had been the first to breach the threshold, still sat slumped against what was left of the door, breathing heavily but not showing any sign of pain or emotion. Adam and Kim were still studying the safe in the bedroom, seeing if anything else was hidden in there or if there was a trace of whatever had been taken.

Tommy stepped toward the pinned man just as Rocky came jogging back, flushed and panting. "I lost him," he said, leaning against the counter. "He went out the front door and turned a corner and by the time I got there he was gone."

"No luck in there either," Kim said, emerging from the bedroom with Adam on her heels. "Whatever was in there, the only thing we know of is what size it could have been. There's nothing left in there."

"Damn," Tommy muttered. He knelt down in front of the man sitting on the floor. "Hey." He gently slapped the man's cheek a couple times to try and get his attention. "Hey! Anyone home?"

The man stared at him, unblinking. The smallest hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, but he didn't say anything. Tommy stared back, an idea beginning to form in his head.

"Rock, can you keep watch for a minute?" He asked without breaking eye contact with their captive. Rocky swallowed and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

"Yeah," he said quietly. He turned and leaned against the wall just outside the door.

Tommy returned his attention to the man sitting in front of him. "Who are you?"

Nothing.

Tommy pointed out the door. "Where did he go?" Still no response. "What were you looking for in here?"

The man was still silent. Tommy rocked back on his heels and sighed. "Fine." He leaned forward, stretched around the door, grabbed the screwdriver that Adam had stabbed into the man's hand and twisted it hard toward him.

The man winced in pain, a choked groan escaping his throat. Tommy let go and made eye contact with him again.

"I'm going to ask you those three questions again. If you don't answer them this time, I'm gonna twist that thing harder and then ask you again. If you still don't answer, I'm gonna have one of my friends here take a pair of pliers from the kitchen and break your thumb. If you still won't answer after that, we're gonna start cutting things off." He paused a moment to let that sink in. "Now," he leaned forward and grabbed the man's chin in one hand. "Who are you?"

This time, the man actually responded. But all he did was chuckle softly and sneer at Tommy, his lips curling back to reveal crooked, yellowing teeth. "You people have no fucking idea what you're mixed up in, do you?"

Tommy didn't answer, just leaned forward and twisted the screwdriver again, harder this time. The man's face contorted into a mask of agony and he let out a muffled scream.

"Jesus, Tommy," Adam said softly. Tommy glanced up at his friend to see his face had gone several shades greener. "Is this really necessary?"

Next to Adam, Kim rolled her eyes. "Oh, for god's sake," she muttered, kneeling down opposite Tommy. "Keep asking the questions, Tommy. I'll handle this part."

Tommy looked back to Adam. "We need to figure out what he knows, man. If you don't want to watch, go wipe down the bodies and the rest of the room for prints. We're gonna have to report this before we leave and nobody can know we were here."

Adam nodded gratefully and lurched away, moving slowly into the kitchen. Tommy turned back to the task at hand. "Who are you?" he asked again.

"The name's Bond. James Bond," the man grunted, doing a halfhearted Sean Connery impression. Tommy didn't respond, just gestured out the door again.

"Where'd he go?"

"The North Pole. He's got toys to make."

"What did you people want in here?"

"Dildos. Just box upon box of dildos."

Tommy sighed and nodded to Kim, who twisted the screwdriver again, this time going one direction, then the other, like she was turning a doorknob.

The man screamed in earnest this time, his head bouncing back against the door. "Fuck you!" he spat, his eyes squeezed shut.

"Tommy!" Adam called from across the room. Tommy turned to meet Adam's eye over his shoulder. He was squatting over one of the bodies on the floor, a steak knife in his hand. "Something just came to me – we ought to check these guys for chips."

Tommy nodded. "OK, do it. Show me what you find." He turned back to the man before him. "But first, bring me one of those knives."

Adam quickly complied, and Tommy leaned forward, planting his knee on the man's free hand to hold it down while he gently slit the man's forehead open just below the hairline and carefully pushed a finger into the incision. Ignoring the man's growls of pain, he felt around under the skin for several seconds before withdrawing a blood-stained finger and wiping it on the man's shirt.

"Nothing here," he said casually. "This one's a real boy." He grabbed a handful of the man's shirt and pulled their faces together. "Now I'm going to ask you again. Where did your friend run off to? And why are you here?"

The man studied Tommy's face for a second before he said, "We know the guy who lives here. Billy Cranston."

"If you know him, why did you need five men with guns to come get something from him?" Kim asked suspiciously.

"We figured he might have friends here," the man growled, his smile beginning to widen. "Like you, Kimberly Hart. Or Tommy Oliver here." He gestured past Tommy with his head. "Or your friend Adam Park over there in the kitchen."

Tommy shoved the man so his head bounced hard off the door again. "Who the hell are you? And what did you want from Billy?"

The man stared at Tommy and laughed incredulously. "You really have no idea what's going on, do you?"

Tommy raised an eyebrow. "Please," he said calmly. "Enlighten us."

The man snorted. "Go fuck yourself."

Tommy shrugged. "Hard way, huh? OK." He turned and called over his shoulder. "Hey Adam, slide those pliers over, will ya?"

There was a scraping sound as the pliers slid across the wood floor and bumped against Tommy's leg. He picked them up and handed them to Kim. "Start with the pinky and work your way up."

He watched as Kim squeezed the pliers together on something and twisted savagely. There was a loud crack, and the man let out another choked scream that trailed off into sadistic laughter.

"This is so fucking pointless," he said through wheezing spasms of laughter. "You people are dead already and you don't even know it."

Tommy shook him again. "Listen, asshole, I don't have time for this shit. Either you give me a straight answer in the next ten seconds or Kim here starts cutting your hand off at the wrist." He handed Kim the knife and leaned in close, letting his weight off the man's free hand as he did so. "Now tell me what the fuck you're doing here."

"Isn't it obvious by now?" The man said resignedly, fixing Tommy in a steely glare. Tommy just raised his eyebrows in reply, and the man abruptly stopped laughing. "You people are being hunted," he said. "We know who you are – more importantly, thanks to your pal Cranston, we know what you are – and we know where you live, and where you work, and how you fight and what you eat and everything you've ever been afraid of. We don't care about pain or emotions or other people or anything else except our mission, and there are so many more of us than there are of you."

Tommy studied the man's face. "OK…and who the hell is us?"

"Who are we?" The man grinned at him evilly, and some dark part of Tommy's mind thought the man's grin seemed to stretch wider than a human mouth had any right to be. "We're the monster under your bed. We're the dark shadow in the corner of the room before you turn the light on. We're the boogeyman, we're the killer hiding in the basement. We are death incarnate, motherfucker, and we won't stop coming until all of you and everyone you've ever known are nothing but a pile of bones in the dirt."

Suddenly, Tommy felt a tug on his waistband as the man yanked his gun out of the holster and swung it up to the side of his head. Before he could even move to stop him, the man, still grinning that horrible grin, pulled the trigger. There was a resounding pop and a huge amount of blood was splattered on the wood floor of Billy's apartment.

The man slumped forward, blood oozing from the gaping hole he'd blown out of his head. Tommy yanked his gun from the man's dead fingers and shoved it back into his holster, only now remembering to fasten it securely. He glanced around at his friends.

"Adam," he said softly. "You find anything?"

"Yeah," came the slightly stunned reply. "I'm three for three." He held out a hand, revealing three bloodstained chips just like the ones they'd found in the men who'd attacked Tommy's house.

Tommy nodded somberly. "OK. Bring those along. Kim, call 911 and leave an anonymous tip on our way home." He rose to his feet and ran a hand over his face. "Let's get the hell out of here."


AN: Hey guys! Bet you thought this story was dead, huh? Far from it, actually, but I can't guarantee when the next update will be out. In the time since the last update, I've passed the bar, moved to a new city and started a new job, so those things took precedence over writing for a while. But fortunately things have settled down again and hopefully I won't have to make you all wait another two years for the next chapter. Hope you all enjoy.