Carmen led them to the VIP door and held it open for them. This wasn't some cheap side entrance for employees to come and go without being seen by the patrons. The double doors were wood over steel with expensive glass insets that Darien would be willing to bet were bullet proof, the interior even more luxurious than the front, public entrance, and though the exterior was technically an alley, it was meticulously clean. The door was well lit, if unmarked, plants and tiny decorative al fresco tables set to either side. The alley was wide enough to drive semi down with room to spare and utterly failed to smell like old garbage and stale urine. Clearly, the homeless of the great city of San Diego knew better than to hang around here.
Darien gazed about, checking the area out and spotted three cameras off the bat, and suspected there were several more he couldn't see. Carmen stayed in the doorway, standing at the mob version of military parade rest, looking uncomfortable. Darien ignored him for now, checking the place over with the detailed eye of an experienced thief-cum-secret-agent. Six feet down one end of the alley he could see the VIP parking lot.
"Is Alyx's car still here?" he wondered aloud.
Carmen cleared his throat. "Actually, no. We had it delivered to her place. Her keys should be with her belongings, so either the hospital or SDPD has them."
"You hot wired her car?" Hobbes asked, eyebrows raised. "She ain't gonna like that."
Carmen sniffed. "Not hot wired, we can do better than that."
Darien laughed softly. "Thanks, man. She'd freak if something happened to that car."
Carmen nodded in agreement. "I am well aware. They had to have grabbed her somewhere along here. The entrance they used to the building next door is on the same side as the VIP lot."
"And Mom's," Hobbes muttered, "which means they'd know all the camera angles on that side at least."
"They'd've scoped out the building before using it. With no security they could've done that anytime since it was stripped." Darien paced slowly about trying to think as Alyx would have. Leaving Lenny's to head to her car, she would have been wary, but no more alert than usual. She'd said that she'd sensed no one as she left. Returning to the door, Darien shortened his stride to one closer to Alyx's. Recalling her muzzy recollection, he stopped just past the table, where she probably would have been when that remembered sharp pain in her side had hit. A pain, he now realized had probably been whatever had left that splinter of wood buried in her side. Emulating her probable reaction, which would be to swipe at her side and knock it away, he swung his left arm along his side, realizing quickly that the angle was wrong. Turning slightly, as if looking over his left shoulder, his torso twisted just enough for the angle to be right.
"Hobbes, it came from behind her." Darien turned about to look at the opposite end of the alley, a mere ten feet away, ending at the open sidewalk, with cars occasionally zipping past on the tiny side street. "Something caught her attention and she turned just enough to get hit in the side."
"And while she was dealing with that someone came from the other end and whacked her upside the head." Hobbes added with a frown. "But why didn't she fight back?"
Darien moved to the table, going over it with care, the scent of fingerprint powder still lingering on the black painted wrought iron.
"Cops checked over everything yesterday. There's nothing left to find," Carmen told them, sounding unhappy at the conclusions they had drawn so far.
Darien had moved on to the plant, some flowering bit of greenery Alyx would know the name of without having to think more than a few seconds. After a few moments he noted an odd color buried within the green leaves and red flowers, something blue. He had to admit it was practically invisible; the blue only a shade or two off from the dark green leaves it was buried in. "Not everything," he said, waving Bobby over to see for himself.
From out of a pocket, he magically produced a latex glove and, through the foliage Darien held aside, Bobby withdrew what looked like a frill pick, like the kind you got in a sandwich at a deli. Only this one had feathers at one end instead of plastic bits, and had been splintered at the other, as if it had been violently snapped in half. It was incredibly thin, much as the piece pulled out of Alyx's side, though a bit longer, maybe three or three and a half inches.
"Hobbes?"
"Blow dart from the looks of it."
Darien reached out to touch it, but Hobbes yanked it out of reach. "Watch it there, I'm betting it's poisoned or something. Would it explain why the kid went down so fast."
Darien gulped audibly and nodded tightly as Hobbes pulled an evidence bag from an inner pocket, shook it open and placed the dart inside, sealing it for the Keeper to play with later. "I'm not liking this, Bobby."
"Me either, my friend." He gestured at Carmen. "Lead on, Macduff."
"Actually, I prefer Romeo and Juliet to Macbeth." When Darien just stared at him, he shrugged. "Sadly, I am a romantic. This way, gentlemen."
He led them down the alley and to the right, the door easily visible; a standard entrance to a standard building. The place had been a mix of businesses and apartments once upon a time. The glass windowed business faces all street side, this was just a rear entrance allowing access to the storage areas or the upper levels. The elevators had 'out of order' signs on them and, based on the undisturbed dust, hadn't been used in quite some time. The stairs, however, had been used and recently. The trails of blood were everywhere, many smeared due to the foot traffic from the previous day. They headed up and after the first landing, but before they hit the second floor, they found a bloody handprint on the wall in Alyx's size that stopped Darien cold, one shaky hand coming up to his forehead as the reality of what had happened hit him. Maybe... maybe he shouldn't be here. Maybe he... no he was definitely too close to the situation, but if he walked away he'd have to walk away completely, which would mean not getting a chance to deal with the perpetrator personally. And that, more than anything else right now, he wanted. Wanted to be able to tell Alyx that the slime who had done this to her would never hurt her or anyone else ever again.
Crap, he wanted this over with, wanted to fast-forward through the research and questions and tests and investigating and get to the arresting and healing. To hold a well and whole Alyx in his arms and know they'd never have to worry about the son of a bitch who'd had this done to her again. Until the next time. In the last year alone, each of them had been hurt beyond measure because of the job. Attacks on each of them that had left permanent scars both physically and mentally. He wasn't sure if he could handle another one. This wasn't the life he'd wanted, and to now feel responsible for Alyx as well as himself? Right now, right this second it was too fucking much and the absolute need to walk away and never look back hit him with more force than he'd ever thought possible. But he didn't, and the moment passed unacknowledged except for that momentary longing. It wouldn't be the last time that he'd want to walk away, but this particular chance, this crossroad, would be left behind, nothing more than another path not taken. One of so very many in his life.
"Fawkes..." Bobby looked at him with sympathy in every line of his body. This could be no easier for the hardened agent. It was his partner, his friend that had been attacked, and while he wasn't in love with the woman, he did care and loved her in his own way. He surely wanted to deal with these horrific realities no more than Darien, but Bobby remained stoic, keeping his feelings locked tightly inside, only to be revealed after a few drinks when this was all over. Drinks shared with Darien most likely, who could use the rough companionship to keep from breaking down completely.
Darien sighed heavily, meeting Bobby's eyes with ones he was certain were filled with anguish. "I can do this."
Hobbes nodded tightly then continued up the stairs, followed Carmen who had paused his ascent to wait on them. He seemed to understand Darien's sudden need to not deal with this, for which he was thankful. Looking weak in the eyes of a mobster was not typically conducive to one's continued health. On this occasion it might work to his benefit, making the man want to help all that much more if it got Alyx what she needed: answers.
They exited on the third floor, the stairwell door missing as it had been on every other landing. Lenny hadn't been kidding when he'd said the place had been stripped bare; all that remained were the four outside walls and the upright I-beams that supported the weight of the floors and the roof high above them. Most of the place was covered in a layer of dust through which dozens of footprints had been tracked, but off towards the center of the room was a splash of color: that color being the dark brown of dried blood. The crime scene tape was still wrapped about various beams, a huge circle of blood and dirt and damage. Holes punched in the floor and ceiling, one of the I-beams twisted into a warped spiral as if some violent force had passed nearby, while the others were simply bowed out, there were smears, and splotches in various bodily fluid shades all over the room, attesting to the violence of the battle that had taken place. Though the center contained the least amount of gore, suggesting that was where the... rape had taken place. The blood there would all belong to Alyx.
"Jesus," Hobbes muttered softly, that one word conveying the horror he must be feeling at the sight. "What happened here?"
Darien closed his eyes, his fertile imagination running wild. He could picture it, especially with the echoes she had shared with him. Her on her back, four of them holding her down, using their full weight to keep her struggles from throwing them off, the drugs in her system along with the blow to her head keeping her from focusing her sight never mind her powers long enough to get them off of her. The dry snap of her wrist breaking, the dull pop as she tore the ligaments in her knee. And then, when convinced there would be no chance at escape some part of her mind that had been patiently waiting in the shadows all this time waking up and dealing with the miscreants in an eminently permanent fashion. Maybe one of those latent programmed personalities taking over for a few precious moments. That wouldn't be so bad, but if it had been Alyx and just Alyx... it would break her as surely as they had tried to with brutality and sex. She was far more terrified of herself than any man no matter the type of violence perpetrated against her.
"I told you," Carmen said, voice painfully tight as he gazed about, eyes wide in shock, "she broke them." His hands tightened into fists at his side. "And they deserved it." He met Darien's eyes, his look challenging, knowing that as a cop Darien might very well look upon what Alyx had done with disgust.
Instead, Darien surprised him with a snarled, "Damn straight," and for one startling instant, the two opposing forces understood each other completely. The anger washed across him, catching him off-guard with the sheer force of it and causing an unexpected spike of adrenaline that he could in no way control. The problem was the spike also caused a totally normal response, for him anyway, the Quicksilver coming whether he wanted it to or not. Thankfully, though not able to stop it, he could control it. With an effort of will that had become instinctive after all this time, he kept the Quicksilver under his clothes, and invisible to the mob lackey just a few feet away. Revealing this little talent of his would be bad to put it mildly, as he'd probably find himself forcefully recruited by Lenny via blackmail, and while the pay was probably better working for the mob, the retirement plan was worse than that provided by the government.
He felt one cold trickle of Quicksilver run down the side of his face, and hoped liked hell it had gone unnoticed; Bobby's grunt informed him otherwise.
"Fawkes, got to ask a really stupid-sounding question: you okay?" The look Bobby gave him, said quite plainly that he'd seen the Quicksilver, a shimmer somewhere before he'd gotten it under control, and the worried tone let him know that whatever impulse that had caused it, he sympathized with. Darien wouldn't be berated for this slip-up, not in front of company, anyway.
Darien swallowed hard, enforcing his control until the spike wore off, and he could drop the Quicksilver without giving the game away. "Not really," he answered, voice hard through tightly grit teeth. "I think I've seen enough."
Hobbes nodded. "Me too."
Back in the stairwell, Carmen again taking the lead, Darien was able to let the Quicksilver flake away, the scuffing of shoes on the stairs more than covering the gentle chiming sound of it hitting the floor.
Outside Carmen sighed heavily. "I don't think I ever want to go in there again." He glanced up at the windows over his head, shuddering violently for an instant. "Red's not your typical fed, is she?'
Darien could hear the borderline fear in the man's voice and was both happy and dismayed that it was there. Happy because it meant the man would think twice before ever even contemplating lifting a hand against Alyx, dismayed because the last thing she needed was another friend who feared her.
"No, she's not and you might do well to remember that," Bobby informed the man, tone dark.
Carmen simply nodded, not about to argue or disagree at this moment in time. He led them back to the restaurant where that pretty waitress waited with their food, all packaged up and ready to go. There were even plastic wine glasses to go with the expensive-looking bottle. Not that Darien felt like eating right at this moment, but he thanked her anyway before she trotted away to her other patrons.
Darien found a convenient wall that needed holding up and let Bobby handle the goodbye proceedings. "If we have any more questions..."
"Just stop by, Boss' orders, we are to assist you in any way on this matter," Carmen assured them, but his double meaning didn't escape past Darien: on anything else they best go through channels.
The mook sent after the video appeared then and handed over a tiny something to Carmen, who thanked him quietly in obvious dismissal. He held up the small jump drive. "Everything we have is on there, hopefully there will be something of use to you."
Hobbes accepted it with a nod. "Me too. C'mon, Fawkes." Bobby headed towards the main entrance, with Darien trailing behind, hands full of their provided meal.
Carmen stopped him before he got far. "Agent Fawkes."
Darien turned about to find the man standing behind him. "Yeah?"
Carmen held up a business card. "If you ever need anything," he said, then tucked the card into Darien's jacket pocket.
Darien nodded tightly, aware of the many layers of implications to that offer. Yeah, it could just mean help catching the nut job who'd planned Alyx's attack, or it could be some of that corruption Lenny spoke of, an unsubtle job offer should Darien ever show interest in moving beyond the Agency. And that... that could mean they knew more about Darien than they should. That thought truly frightened Darien. If there was the slightest chance they knew the truth about him, knew why he was with the Agency, there could be some serious repercussions. He had to hope that this offer involved nothing more than Alyx and her value to Lenny, which Darien had the feeling was quite considerable.
Darien played it safe and simply said, "Thanks, man."
Carmen gave him a grim smile, then turned away, probably heading off to find his boss. Darien caught up with Bobby who had waited with surprising patience for his partner to finish up his conversation with the mobster.