So much for records. I really don't understand how I fell so far out of habit of writing. This update took way too long, and it's one of four stories I should be updating more frequently. I do apologize for taking so long in getting this out. Hopefully you all enjoy it!
As usual, you people are awesome. Thank you so much for all the reviews and favorites and follows!
Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.
The phone on his cabinet rang.
Fyodor Orlov stiffened, lowering his mid-day drink of vodka. That phone was on a separate line. A secure one. It was not for average business, or to be ignored when it rang.
Even so, he wanted to.
He knew who would be on the other end. He knew the failure of Artur's Brigade could mean consequences for him. But if he ignored the call, those consequences would be far worse.
Fyodor placed his drink on the desk, then stood and moved to the ringing phone, his footsteps echoing on the rich wooden floor of the den of his private residence. He picked it up on the third ring. "Hello," he said flatly, in English.
The American voice on the other end of the line was equally flat as it said, "A Decree of silence has been Enacted."
The line clicked dead.
A… A Decree? Death was coming? Here, in Washington? In the twenty-three years he had been Pakhan of Washington, Fyodor had never heard of a Decree being Enacted in the United States. Now one had been Enacted in the capital.
This was not good.
"Vadim," he called out, this time in his mother tongue.
Ten seconds later, a younger man appeared at the office door. He was bald, and four inches taller than Fyodor's six-one frame. His dark brown eyes promised pain to those that offended him. "Sir?" Vadim— head of his Obshchak, or Security Group—asked, his deep voice formal and respectful.
"Shut everything down. All trades. All shipments. All contracts. I don't want anyone attracting attention for any reason."
Vadim stared at him, his expressionless look a question all itself.
"There's been a Decree."
The question vanished. A trace of discomfort entered his dangerous eyes. "This will be done," Vadim said, and went to close the door.
"And, Vadim."
His Obshchak paused and looked back to him.
"Perhaps it's time to see this country's forests."
"I will prepare the estate for your extended stay." Vadim left the room.
After he had, Fyodor went back to his desk, drank his vodka, and set about preparing to leave.
Whatever had brought Death to Washington, whatever it was Death planned to do, Fyodor had no intention of being there when they arrived.
The call spread throughout the city.
From gang hideouts, to mob establishments, to drug dens, to cyber crime caves, phones rang. Those phones were answered, and each time, the same words were spoken by a flat voice.
"A Decree of silence has been Enacted."
Those who understood the words spoken, halted illegal activity without hesitation or complaint. Plans months in the making were put on hold until further notice. Bars and restaurants and clubs were closed without explanation given to their patrons. Dark web chat rooms went offline. Streets commonly seen as territory were cleared and emptied. The command of Silence was obeyed.
Those who did not understand—those that had risen to their position of authority too quickly and improperly—dismissed what they were told. They attempted to take advantage of the perceived weakness they saw from rivals. The command of Silence was ignored.
Examples were swiftly and cleanly made.
Those who did not understand, understood. Corrections were made. The command of Silence was obeyed.
The path was made clear for Death.
"What's your name?"
That simple question was met with silence. The Russian hitman stared straight ahead, ignoring Quinn, one of his fingers regularly tapping against the table in a steady, drumming beat. A disruptive tactic meant to knock her off her game, distract her. Annoy her just enough that her interrogative flow was interrupted.
It hadn't worked. But then again, she hadn't gotten anything out of him. Maybe it was.
Quinn waited a beat for the dark-haired man to answer. He didn't. She tried again. "I can't help you if I don't know who you are."
The man blinked slowly, eyes blank and void of expression. His finger tapped away, filling the silence where an interrogation should have been taking place. Trying to distract her.
Time to try something else. "Do you know where you'll be sent, if you don't cooperate?"
He kept tapping.
"Contract killing. Assassination. Attempted murder. Breaking and entering. Possession of illegal firearms. That's not including all the other crimes I'm sure your fingerprints are going to lead us to."
He blinked once. Said nothing. Kept tapping.
"Without accounting for any of the criminal charges we're certain are coming, you're looking at 50 years behind bars. And that's if you're lucky. If you aren't, and my boss comes in here, you're looking at a double life sentence at ADX."
That got a response out of him. A small one, just a slight tightening of the eyes, a slight increase in the force of the tapping. Even the hardore feared the most secure prison ever conceived.
"And, of course, that's assuming you don't have any connections we deem a threat to national security. People like you meet all kinds of other people. Customers. Contacts. Victims. Sometimes even you don't know who you know."
That got another rise. The same as the last, and even a little smaller. He saw the Gitmo bluff. She needed another tactic change.
"You know, I could talk to the judge. Get them to go easy on you. But only if you tell me who hired you."
The tapping stopped. His gaze went directly to her for the first time. She thought she saw something in those hard eyes of his. An emotion. A reaction. Fear. A few like very few she had seen in her life.
Then he said the one word she dreaded the most. It came out in broken, accented English, but it was unmistakable: "Lawyer."
In one last effort to save her interrogation, she tried again, "Who told you to go into that house?"
"Lawyer!"
Quinn sat up straight, picked up her things. "We'll get you one. Then we're going to charge you with everything we can think of."
Then she left the room.
Gibbs watched it all from the observation room next door.
This Russian was a tough case. Mafia-types tended to be. More money, better teachers. But everyone, no matter how well-prepared they were, had a weakness. It seemed Quinn had found it by asking about his boss.
Now they had to find out why.
The door opened behind him. Quinn stepped up next to him a second later. "Sorry, Gibbs. I blew it."
"Nope," he said. "He was just ready for you. Happens."
"We gettin' him a lawyer?"
"It's the law. Unless he has ties to terrorists."
Quinn seemed to get the message. She was a quick study. "I'll call some buddies in the FBI. See if there's any Russians who've been in bed with anyone on a terror watch list."
"You do that. I'll be in the conference room."
He and Quinn left the observation room at the same time, moving in different directions. She went to make whatever calls she had to, while he returned to the Squadroom, ascended the stairs, and went to the conference room.
Vance and Ziva were already there, sitting across from each other, looking tense but far from uncomfortable. Friendly, even. Just not in the way she and McGee had been before. Such was the nature of any friendship between two people who wielded unequal power.
"—been too long since we could talk in person," Vance was saying as Gibbs entered. "I say this as both Director of NCIS and my own personal opinion: it's good to see you again, Ziva David."
Ziva chuckled. "You do not mean that fully, Director."
"I do," Leon said. "Though I confess that your actions today have kept me busy."
"You mean they have given you a headshake."
"Ache. And no. I meant busy. Busy defending you, keeping the right people in the loop, directing the wrong people to the waiting room. Nothing unexpected. If I were upset, I'd have let you know, David. I owe my people honesty."
Ziva was silent for a moment, gazing at Leon with a soft smile. "Thank you, Director."
"Don't thank me yet," Leon said. "I still haven't heard about what you've gotten yourself into. Which we should ask her about, Agent Gibbs."
A corner of Gibbs' mouth twitched upward, despite the events of the day. He hadn't made a sound as he entered, and Vance had never looked to the door. Probably caught the quick eye-flick Ziva had sent his way.
He fully entered the room and stopped behind Vance, gazing at Ziva expectantly but calmly.
"You know you can sit, Gibbs," Vance said, glancing back.
Gibbs shrugged. "Like to stand."
Vance looked back to Ziva. "Gibbs told me what you shared before. What happened the night of the attack?"
Ziva sighed, what little light she allowed in her eyes fading. "I did what I could for Diana. I kept asking her what she had gotten into, but she deflected. Gave quarter answers."
"Half answers," Gibbs said.
"Same difference. She would not tell me. So, after managed to fall asleep late in the night, I went through her possessions. There I found the flash drive. I thought of plugging it into my computer, but I have seen McGee track many people who do something as simple as that. So I went outside to place a call."
"Mossad," Vance guessed.
"You."
Gibbs raised his eyebrows a fraction of an inch. He suspected Vance wore an identical expression, but with more expression in it.
"Diana was an American citizen, and one in obvious mortal danger," Ziva explained. "That left me with several options. First was the CIA, but I do not know many who work there, and I know far fewer whom I trust. Second was the FBI, but again I do not have any significant contacts among them. That left you. I knew you would help."
Vance nodded, the closest to a thank you he'd allow himself. Gibbs knew how he worked in this setting. "We would have at least coordinated. But we didn't get the chance."
At that, Gibbs saw Ziva's eyes grow distant. A little more dull and blank. "No, you did not. The mortar hit just as I stepped outside. What happened after that is… A blur. I cannot recall details for a long time. The next I am aware, Tali is outside, crying, while I am running for the hill with my weapon in hand."
"You ran on instinct," Gibbs said. "Got Tali out and went after the mortar position."
"But was that Mossad's training or my own desire?"
"Both," Vance said. "Hell hath no fury like an angry mother. Especially one trained in black operations."
That got a twitch from the corner of Ziva's mouth. It returned to a flat line on her next statement: "I went after the attacker. He evaded me for nearly two hours, but I caught him. Got him to talk. Found out why my home was targeted. Found out both myself and Diana had been targets assigned from different parties. As soon as I heard that, I knew."
"Knew what?" Vance asked.
"That I could not return home. That any move I made would draw danger to those close to me. I…" Her voice faltered, face betraying the emotions she was so good at holding back. "... I left. I left everything. Left my child."
Gibbs felt his gut tighten. Not from suspicion; from sympathy. Every parent felt guilt when they left without their child. He felt it every time he deployed, leaving Shannon and Kelly behind.
At least Ziva still had Tali.
Vance let Ziva take a few moments to gather herself, then asked the big question: "What forced you to leave?"
Ziva took a breath before staring at the wall, her eyes seeing something that wasn't there. "Death."
Gibbs' eye twitched along with his gut. "Death?"
"That is their name. Or rather, the only name known by those I have encountered. Whoever they are, their reach and resources are… Formidable."
His gut was still talking to him. Death. Sounded cliché. But the name wasn't what mattered. Capabilities did. And from how Ziva spoke, Death was very capable.
So how come Gibbs hadn't heard of them?
"They're the ones responsible for the attack on the Ritz-Carlton in Tel Aviv?" Vance asked.
"No," she said, slowly. Painfully. As if that one word tore at her throat.
"Then who?"
"Me."
Gibbs gut clenched. He knew what she was going to say. "David…"
"If I had not lost my ability to stomach old contacts dying because they spoke to me, if I had not grown tired of seeing villages burning because I slept in their gutter the previous night." Her voice broke, her eyes watering. She took a long pause and looked to the side, taking one deep breath, then a second. Then she mastered herself. "If I had not grown weak, if I had not tried to smuggle the drive back to you, no one at that hotel would be dead."
As much as Gibbs hated to admit, she wasn't wrong. But the past couldn't be changed, and for all they knew, her keeping the drive could have led to something even worse. "You didn't give the order."
"But I was stupid. Moronic. Arrogant. I made a mistake that tipped my hand. I shifted their crosshairs from my head to theirs. I made them targets. I made my child a target." Her voice was bitter now. Furious. Angry at herself. Angry at anyone who tried to convince her otherwise.
Gibbs had to let it go. It hurt him like a knife to the gut, but he wasn't going to get through to her. He didn't need his gut to see that.
"Gibbs," Vance said, standing up from his seat. "A word."
Seemed Vance had seen the same.
Gibbs followed Leon out of the room, closing the door behind him.
"I need you to step out of this." Straight to the point.
"She's one of mine, Leon."
"You're too close. As she's revealing information, you're having her spend half her time denying what you say."
Gibbs knew, in both his gut and his mind, that Vance was right. He didn't like it. "Three times we've lost her, Leon. I'm not going to stand by and lose her a fourth time to guilt."
"Not saying you should," Vance said. "But we need answers. This is the best way we can get them from her. Working on her self-esteem can wait."
Gibbs' eye twitched.
"You've been giving me that look a lot recently. Stop. I don't like this any more than you do. After all, she is one of mine."
That quelled the worst of Gibbs' protective fire. He still didn't like being left out of the room, but it had to be done. Maybe she would be more receptive to his counterpoints after she got out. He stepped to the side, nodding to the door. "Director."
"Gibbs." Vance returned the nod, then re-entered the conference room. He shut the door behind him. Shutting Gibbs out. Blocking him from countering Ziva's self-loathing remarks.
His eye twitched. He didn't like it.
He needed coffee.
He made his way back to the Squadroom, knowing coffee could wait another few minutes. When he approached the Bullpen, he saw his team gathered in front of one of the main screens. They dispersed when they noticed him. Tim had probably hacked the conference room feed.
"Something interesting?" He asked, making his way to his desk.
"Nope," said Bishop.
"Not a thing, Boss," said McGee.
"Just standing," Torres added.
Their words came too quickly to have been genuine.
Gibbs hummed, checked his email. As usual, nothing important was in his inbox, but McGee's habits had rubbed off on him. "Listen up: new assignment."
"Another one?" Bishop asked, a slight tone of incredulity in her voice. "We already have two major cases and multiple leads to follow."
Gibbs gave her a look.
"Right. Sorry. Need coffee. New assignment?"
"A name," he said. "Death."
"Death?" Torres asked, failing to contain a grin. "Someone's using that as a name? Sounds like something out of a dumb movie."
Gibbs gave him a look, too, and the younger man fell silent. The young laugh while the old worry, Gibbs thought. Someday, Torres would be old, and understand that names meant nothing. Just like DiNozzo eventually did.
"So, we're looking for criminals who go by a one-word alias?" McGee asked, curious but confused. Gibbs didn't blame him.
"Start with that. Expand everywhere else. Ziva claims someone by the name of Death is behind the Ritz-Carlton attack. Find out if there's anything to it."
"I'll take arms dealers and terrorists," Bishop said.
"I'll take hackers and cyber criminals," McGee said.
"I'll… Keep standing?" Torres offered, shrugging.
Gibbs gave him a look.
Torres caught on after a second. "I'll check in with some… Friends. Maybe they've heard something." He walked out of the Bullpen, heading for the main elevator.
Has potential, Gibbs thought. Needs to catch on quicker.
Gibbs took a moment to watch his team work, then went for the secondary elevator. Abby had something.
He arrived at Abby's lab in under two minutes. When he got there, the main screen was displaying photos of the men who had attacked he and Ziva. Three were taken in autopsy, while the last had been taken shortly after the lone survivor arrived for questioning.
Abby herself was at her computer, though as he stepped into the room, she picked up her phone and speed-dialed a number.
His own phone rang half a second later. He ignored it. "Got something, Abbs?"
Abby turned to him, phone still to her ear, and stared at him with narrowed eyes. "I almost beat you," she said, hanging up her phone with a faux scowl.
"Whadda got?"
"First thing's first." She crossed the space between them and placed her hands against his shoulders. "Are you okay?"
"Fine, Abbs."
She narrowed her eyes. "People just broke into your house, Gibbs. They broke into your house and tried to kill you and Ziva. People aren't fine with that."
"Abby," he said, a little firmer this time. "I'm fine."
"Good." With that, she hugged him tightly. He hugged her back. "Because I was so scared when I heard about your house? Like, what if you were hurt, or shot, or killed? Would I have known right away? And what about Ziva? She was already shot. What if she were hit again, or stabbed or, blown up, or suffocated? She just got here! Oh, I should have been upstairs to welcome her back..."
"Abbs." Gently, he pushed her back, holding her at arms length. "It's okay. We're fine."
"You say that, but what about Ziva, Gibbs?"
"She's getting along as well as she can."
"So not good."
Gibbs didn't confirm or deny that.
Abby became downcast. "Oh, now I really wish I had been upstairs. I should have walked away from this. I needed to. Why didn't I? I owe her, like, the biggest hug ever. Maybe I should head up to the conference room."
"Abbs," he cut in gently.
"Right," she said with a nod, yet another look—determination, this time—gracing her friendly face. "Case. Job. Hugs later. Okay. So those faces on screen are your home invaders, who you already know. Well, partially; it's been strangely difficult to find out who they really are, or were. Mostly were. Ziva's a really good shot."
"Abbs."
"Patience, Gibbs." She turned and walked to the table in the center of the room. Evidence bags containing everything the hitmen had on them on it, nearly blocking view of its metal surface. She reached into the mess of evidence and produced their bagged phones. Each phone was basic and cheap, even by Gibbs' standards. "After going through the logs on these, I can safely say these guys are—mostly were—pros, just like the team with our bad Marine. Only a little better. There is not one personal item on them. Nothing with names. Nothing connected to any accounts. And they deleted everything from their phones. And the only contacts they had programmed are each other."
"But you found something anyway."
"Oh, you know me too well, Gibbs." She returned to her computer, bringing up call logs overtop the images of the three dead and one living hitmen. "These are all the calls those phones received or made over their lifetimes. As you can clearly see, they only called each other. Probably to brag about kills or something bad guy-ish like that. I wonder if they hung out with Caine at all? Swapped murder stories or something. But that's beside the point, because there's an outlier in this group."
She highlighted the logs from the man they had in Interrogation. Gibbs knew none of the numbers, but his trained eyes saw the same number appear nearly fifteen times in the phone's last thirty calls. "Lot of calls to one number," he said.
"More than half of all calls placed by him. Either he has a girlfriend, or he's talking to his boss."
"You get a name from the second number?"
"Led to another burner phone, but I did find something." She brought up a text message. It had Gibbs' address in it, proceeded by a line of Russian text that Gibbs read as:
New target for you at this address. No restrictions. Death will pay extra for speed.
Death.
There was that name again. First from Ziva. Now from the Russians hired to kill her. Surely, if they dug deep enough through their phones, the first hit team sent after her as well. And Thanatos was the personification of death in Greek mythology. Diana Woods went to great lengths to hide mention of Thanatos Industries.
Rule #39.
This figure, this Death, really was behind everything. Someone, somewhere, wielded incredible influence in the world's underbelly. Someone who was known to criminals, and completely unknown to NCIS.
The implications behind that were frightening.
"Where was that phone when they sent that message?" Gibbs asked, focusing on the present.
Abby smiled, and wordlessly lifted up a small piece of paper.
Always trying to stay one step ahead, Gibbs thought as he grabbed the offered note and made for the door. "That's good work, Abby."
"Hey!" Gibbs paused and turned back.
Abby was looking at him with exasperated offense, her hands on her hips, eyebrows raised. "Forgetting something?"
Gibbs stepped over and placed a kiss on her forehead. "Good work."
"Thanks, but I was actually asking for a Caf-Pow."
He offered her a tiny smile, then left the room.
Quinn was probably done with her contacts. Maybe she was up for a drive.
He returned to the Bullpen a minute later. Bishop and McGee were still in place, hard at work on their computers and phones. Quinn was also there, holding a folder. She looked at him as soon as he entered the Bullpen. "Gibbs."
"Got something?" He asked. Maybe the drive could wait.
"Depends on how you look at it." She handed him the folder.
Gibbs opened it. It contained a series of surveillance photographs focused on a number of different individuals. He didn't recognize most of them, but some faces were familiar to him. Gang leaders. High-level members of organized crime families and clans. Not the type to mess with.
"Potential bosses for our Russian in Interrogation?"
"And all already under investigation by Metro and the FBI for every crime in the book. But here's the thing: they're all gone."
Gibbs gave her a look. "What do you mean?"
"Gone," she said. "As in, not in DC. They left the city today."
"All of them?"
"Every one."
Gibbs felt something stir in his gut. A dark, slow-moving object that resembled dread. "Your contacts say why?"
"No idea, but they're scared; my guys and those guys. And these aren't the type of people who scare easily. Something's wrong, Gibbs. Something's really wrong."
His gut agreed. People like these—mobsters, contract killers, dealers—they were fearless right up until they were beaten. Beaten, or they came face-to-face with someone bigger and badder than they were.
What were the odds Death was bigger and badder?
Out of his peripheral, Gibbs saw Vance move into view at the top of the stairs. Gibbs focused on him, and saw how quickly Vance was descending to the Squadroom, his phone glued to his ear, his eyes hard and straight forward.
Gibbs' gut clenched. He knew that look…
"Keep talking to your contacts." Gibbs gave the folder back to Quinn, then moved to meet Vance near the window.
He did moments later. The look Gibbs had seen at a distance was even more intense up close. Rarely had Gibbs seen Leon look like this.
They always led to bad news.
"Gibbs." Leon's voice was quiet and harsh, and bore the severity of disaster. "We have a problem."
A satellite phone rang next to the man in the suit. He answered. "The locals have heeded the Decree." It was the American Operative again.
"Troublemakers?" The man asked, gazing out his private jet window at the ocean below. They were cruising at 35,000 feet. Too high to see much of any detail. He found the color soothing.
"A few."
The man was not surprised to hear that; there were always a few unwise, stubborn upstarts who thought they knew how the world worked. "I assume they are dealt with."
"Yes, Death."
"Cleanly?"
"No trace was left behind."
The man reached to his left and took a sip of water. "And the Target?"
"Landed three minutes ago."
"Are Operatives in place?"
"Yes."
"Take him."
"All I'm saying, DiNozzo, is that you can't look me in the eye and tell me Eastwood wasn't the king of the gritty Western."
"And all I'm saying, is that you can't look me in the eye and tell me Wayne wasn't the king of the Western."
"You mean the king of… Dramatic… Lines."
Tony laughed humorlessly, taking a moment to regain his composure for that sideswipe.
He was on the ground in DC, jet-lagged as all hell and riding in an armored SUV provided by NCIS. The SUV had come with three Agents to act as bodyguards for him and the flashdrive. One of them was a familiar face. Matt-something; Tony forgot his last name. Good guy. Liked to debate movies, which was a welcome distraction from thinking about how terrified his daughter probably was right now.
"When you're the godfather of a genre, tropes start with you," Tony said, getting back to the argument. "You can't judge the Duke like he's a modern star; he started all the clichés. We judge modern movies because they don't try to start their own clichés."
"But Wayne wasn't even that good an actor!" Matt said. "He played one type of character his entire career, and that character, in personality, was similar to how he acted."
"And how many times did Clint play the comedian?"
"I'm starting to regret coming into work today," said the driver, a woman who'd introduced herself by her last name, Gordon.
"Could be worse," said the front seat passenger, Kurt. "You could be back there with them."
"Okay, okay, we're not getting anywhere," Matt said, ignoring the other two Agents. "Schwarzenegger and Stallone."
Tony went to say Stallone, but then he saw something that set off alarms in his head.
A garbage truck, stationary in an alley. He wouldn't have seen it if he hadn't already been turned in his seat to argue with Matt in the seat next to him. But he did. And all his mind could focus on was one question.
Hadn't pick up for this area been two days ago?
That question was discarded when he looked ahead and saw another garbage truck pulling out from a different alley. He looked back, and saw the first garbage truck doing the same.
Ambush.
"Go!" He shouted, with all the urgency he could. "We're about to get boxed in!"
Gordon realized that one precious second after he had. She accelerated and turned, making for the side of the street the truck had yet to block. But she was just too late.
The garbage truck clipped them as they raced by, and the SUV spun a full 180°, ending up facing the truck. The driver was looking right at them, outfitted in a combat vest.
"Reverse, reverse!" Kurt cried.
"Get us some backup!" Gordon cried, throwing the vehicle in reverse and turning back so she could see where she was going.
"Phone's are jammed!" Matt said, dropping his phone and taking out his sidearm.
They knew where we were going, Tony thought, numb to the situation. They were ready.
They were after him.
The sound of engines caused Tony to snap out of it in time to see Gordon widen her eyes. "Brace!"
There was a deafeningly loud crash and screech of metal just before Tony was thrown back against his seat. Glass from the rear windows flew by him as his head slammed against the headrest hard enough for him to see stars. Airbags went off all over the interior—from the sides, the front, the back—temporary blocking his view of the outside.
A few seconds later, Tony heard a faint, thump.
A round object came through the shattered back window landed on the floor right next to his feet. He didn't have time to identify it before it began leaking a thin, vapor-like smoke. Tear gas.
Tony's already-swimming vision became even more blurry. His mouth and nostrils began to burn from the gas. He started coughing. Only once to start, then twice, then three times, until it was all he could do, and his eyes were filled with tears.
More glass shattered. First at the driver's window, then the front passenger's. Then Matt and his. DiNozzo looked up through tear-filled eyes that could barely see straight.
Someone was standing at his window. Someone in a mask and full combat getup, complete with a rifle currently held at the ready. Someone who had three other someones in identical gear at the other windows.
The one in front of Tony grabbed the side of his head and turned his head this way and that, looking down at his wrist, where Tony saw some model of smart watch.
"Got him," the masked person said, voice muffled by the gas mask. He pulled the inside door handle and roughly dragged DiNozzo from the SUV. "Clean up."
As he hit the pavement, DiNozzo saw the masked hostile at the driver's window raise his rifle.
"No!"
His ears nearly burst from the report of the first shot. The long series of shots that followed from both sides of the vehicle did the job. By the time they stopped, Tony could only hear a constant ringing. Could only stare on in horror as blood spattered the inside of the SUV.
No.
Something cold jabbed him in the arm. A needle. A numb feeling began to spread out from the area. He felt his head growing lighter still. And lighter. And lighter. And number and number.
He laid there for several long, agonizing minutes. Repeating in his head what he'd just witnessed. Asking himself questions he already knew he couldn't answer. All while staring up at an expressionless mask.
Then the drug did it's job. The world went dark.
He knew no more.
That final scene, I must say, wasn't how I wanted it to go. I had another, more technical vision for that event. However, sometimes writing doesn't cooperate with you. So it goes.
This chapter was a bit more filler-y than I intended, but I found I needed to answer some questions and present some new ones. I do hope I got everyone in character as I wrote this not-quite-as-exciting chapter (barring the ending scene). I also hope I got everyone in character; I really try to get canon characters correct. Feel free to offer thoughts on that if you review.
I will pick a credit song tomorrow. Too late to browse in search of the right song.
Thank you all for reading. If you enjoyed reading, please share or recommend this to a friend or friends. And if you really enjoyed reading, please leave a comment. They are the lifeblood of all writers, and they do not take long to leave.
See you soon.