Chapter 2

The fifth day after quitting, Percy had decided. He was going to go to London for a few days, see the sights. He spent the day rummaging through his closet and dresser, throwing clothes onto the bed and trying to pack them into his backpack and suitcase. He called travel agents, found out plane ticket prices and researched hotels.

Around noon, the doorbell rang. Percy answered it in the middle of a phone call. A man stood outside, dressed in a brown suit with a jacket that seemed too big for him. The fact that it looked too big was surprising, because the man himself was big. He was older than Percy, with a craggy face that needed a shave.

“Percival Fonway?” the man asked, but he managed to make it sound like he wasn’t asking a question.

“Hold on a moment,” Percy spoke into the phone, then put his thumb over the speaker. “That’s me,” he told the old man. “What can I do for you?”

“You are to come with me immediately.”

“I’m sorry… Who are you?”

“Hayden Claymore,” the man barked “If you want to play hide and seek, you need to find a better hiding spot than your house. You are to come with me, right now.” The man turned, as if he were going to lead Percy out into the car that sat in the driveway.

Percy clicked the phone off and set it down on the table near the umbrella stand without taking his eyes on the man. Then he slid open the drawer of the table and pulled out the handgun that rested there. He kept it behind the doorframe as he continued speaking to the man.

“I don’t think I understand what you are talking about.”

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?”

The man abruptly forced his way into the door. He was a big man, sure, but Percy was still surprised at the sheer strength the old man had as he pushed past Percy into the hallway. Percy tried to bring the gun up and force the old man to stop, but almost before he had moved, the man had disarmed him with a move akin to judo. Facing the barrel of his own gun, Percy stared at the old man.

“Who are you?”

“I work for BAWI,” the man, Hayden, told him, his finger resting dangerously on the trigger, “and you have seriously pissed off your employer by choosing to ignore your summons.” He took a step closer. “Go up and get your suitcase. Your travel plans to London have already been canceled.”

“What the… How did you know…”

“I know everything. Now go upstairs and get your suitcase and come with me.”

He steered Percy towards the stairs at gunpoint. Percy took the steps slowly, but once he got into his room, he darted for the phone there. He punched in 911 as he brought the phone to his ear. No signal. Someone had cut his phone service.

“Fonway! I am not in the mood to play games. Get down here.” The man’s voice was collected and quiet, but it carried up the steps as if he were shouting.

“I’m coming! I just need to…” Percy tried to think of something, anything, to stall, but almost before he’d trailed off to think, Hayden was in the doorway, holding another of Percy’s stash of hidden handguns, this one from within the bookcase in the living room.

Percy didn’t have much of a choice as he was led out to the car. Hayden threw the suitcase into the trunk and got into the driver’s seat. Percy hesitated for a moment as he slid into the passenger seat, wondering if he could make a break for it, but Hayden seemed to be reading his thoughts as the man stared at him. He decided against it, but it was humiliating, a police officer being kidnapped from his own house. Well, former police officer, he reminded himself. So apparently these BAWI people were real. All he needed to do was explain to them, whoever they were, that he wasn’t interested in their offer. That would be it. He would continue as planned. This would just be part of his vacation, a detour to Detroit.

Hayden drove exactly the speed limit the entire way to the airport. At the airport, he made Percy lug his suitcase out and with him through the terminal. It seemed like the entire world catered to Hayden’s whim as they sailed through security and check in and were directed to a small jet at the far end of the runway.

For a private jet, if that’s what it was, it was rather beat up inside, looking more like a cargo plane with seats in it than a private or luxury aircraft. There was little upholstery and no insulation. Shelves and cabinets were bolted to the insides and rattled ominously as the plane took off. Percy was strapped into one of only four bucket seats, while Hayden sat in another, legs crossed and reading a stack of papers. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention to Percy, but he was holding Percy’s gun in an unassumingly prepared way. They never saw the pilot, who nevertheless took off exactly when they were finished strapping in. It was as if Hayden were controlling everything with his mind as it all seemed to fit together like clockwork.

Neither one spoke for most of the trip. Hayden did not volunteer any more information or conversation and Percy wasn’t going to speak before the other man. This went on for hours. Hayden read his stack of papers and Percy staring awkwardly at anything that wasn’t Hayden and trying to pretend he wasn’t feeling awkward at all while maintaining stoic silence. However, as he looked out the window, he noticed they were flying over desert.

He tried to think of reasons for this, but as it continued for hour after hour, with nothing but desert below them, he couldn’t stay quiet.

“Are we allowed to be flying this low?”

Hayden didn’t answer at first, but looked out the window silently for a moment.

“Yes,” he said finally. Percy waited for a moment, but the other man didn’t seem inclined to say anything else. He just looked out the window for a bit longer. Percy saw now that some of what looked like wrinkles at first glance were actually scars upon further examination. It was obvious that he was old, maybe even twice as old as Percy, and his hair was full-on gray, but his carriage and agility made he seem much younger. In fact, there were more reasons to suppose that he was young than there were to suppose he was old; he had the build of a man in his prime. Percy couldn’t help but wonder why he knew so definitely that Hayden was older. It was something in the eyes maybe. A sort of jaded experience that Percy liked to think he was acquiring; Hayden possessed it and then some.

Silence reigned between them for a while longer. Percy tried in vain to find something interesting inside or outside of the plane. But inside there was only the utilitarian aesthetics of the psuedo-cargo plane which, despite their evoking of the inside of a mechanic’s garage, were actually meticulously clean. There was not an object out of place or even out in the open, not even a bit of wire to fiddle with or a manual to browse. And outside there was only the desert, mile after mile of it, only a monochrome tan from so high up, with no distinguishing features about it. However, after a while, Percy remembered something.

“Aren’t we supposed to be going to Detroit?”

“No. That was where you were supposed to be going three days ago. Headquarters has moved on since then.”

Percy digested that, trying to decide between his two questions or whether he should talk at all. After all, he was supposed to be resenting this, he was resenting this… abduction. He wasn’t supposed to be curious. But he still wanted to know. He picked a question.

“How often do you move?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

Bad choice apparently. It almost made him rethink asking his next question, but he forged ahead. Might as well find out as much information as possible. If he could escape, he could call down the police on them or something. Legitimate organization or not, he was pretty sure it was illegal for BAWI to be kidnapping their prospective employees.

“Where is Headquarters now, then?” he asked. Hayden turned away from the window and went back to reading his papers.

“We are not going to Headquarters.”

Shot down again and now another question. If Percy hadn’t already disliked Hayden, this would be enough to make him hate the man.

“So, where are we going?”

“You don’t need to know that either.”

“Why have we been over the desert so long?”

“We’ve been circling for a while now. I’m surprised it took you this long to notice.”

Percy pressed his lips together tightly. Hayden didn’t look up from his papers. It seemed like he had been reading the same sheet for a ridiculously long time.

“Why are we circling?”

“Our pilot is waiting for somebody.”

“Who?”

“Someone who wants to kill us.”

Percy blinked, but Hayden still hadn’t looked up from his papers.

“What?”

“Our pilot is working for someone who wants to kill us. They must be in touch via radio. We’ve been circling for about an hour now in a wide arc, so that we wouldn’t notice the centrifugal force. However, the pilot is flying low enough that we’ve passed the same noticeable landmark twice. They were hoping we wouldn’t notice the fact we were still in the desert due to the fact that they’re not quite sure where we’re going.”

“What… I mean… Kill us? Why not just come in here and shoot us?”

“We know who our pilot is, so they’re hoping that if we are killed by someone other than the pilot, they will go unidentified. They don’t realize just what kind of force BAWI is.”

Percy had almost liked Hayden better when he wasn’t talking or was shooting Percy’s questions down.

“What do you mean?” He was actually having a hard time taking all of this seriously. However, when Hayden suddenly tidied his stack of papers and set them in a briefcase at his side, Percy was abruptly very nervous.

“I mean,” said Hayden, “we already knew about this pilot’s betrayal and even who he is working for. There’s been a bug in the cabin this entire trip, gathering vital information from the pilot’s radio transmissions.”

The older man unstrapped himself from the seat and checked the safety on Percy’s gun. Percy was suddenly very curious as to how Hayden had gotten through security at the airport. He had a suspicion that Hayden had more than one gun on his person. He wouldn’t have come to Percy’s house, knowing Percy had a gun, without a gun of his own, would he? Percy suddenly wasn’t sure of anything anymore as he watched Hayden more towards the cockpit.

“Wait. What are you going to do?”

Hayden’s mouth twitched into something like a grin, the first expression Percy had seen on his face, and Percy’s nervousness began to change to fear.

“Have a chat with the pilot.”

Then the expression was gone and Percy wasn’t sure if it had even been real in the first place? Was his mind playing tricks on him? Was this what kidnap victims went through? He had been to seminars and classes as part of training about kidnap victims, but had not every really thought about it.

A thought occurred to him then; what did Hayden mean by “chat”? Percy began to frantically unbuckle the multitude of straps that bound him to his seat. Even if he had just been imagining the small grin on Hayden’s face, the fact that the man knew the pilot was a traitor, setting him up for possible assassination - if all of Hayden’s rambling had been true, Percy reminded himself - all did not add up to a favorable confrontation between the two.

Even as Percy finished fumbling with the last buckle, the plane bucked like an angry horse and he was thrown out of his seat. He rolled across the plane, head up to shield his head, and his leg slammed into the corner of a metal locker. What sounded like a gunshot echoed through the metal space and Percy wasn’t sure if ti had been a gunshot or had just bee the contents of the warehouse craft shifting in their containers. The plane steadied and Percy tried to drag himself to his feet, but pain shot through his leg, causing his foot to seize up in shock.

It wasn’t broken though and Percy forced himself upright and stumbled towards the cabin. But the door was locked from the inside. Percy pounded on the door with a fist.

“Hayden? Let me in! What’s going on in there? Hayden?”

The bucking of the plane had convinced him that whatever was going on behind the door was definitely physical. The door would not open and Percy kicked at the latch. His leg twinged and wobbled with pain however and he had to stop, a whining hiss escaping between his teeth.

“Hayden?”

The plane didn’t buck anymore but Percy felt it start to descend. There was a moment of weightlessness as it dipped, then Percy ran to the window and saw the clouds rushing by as they raced towards the ground. Were they diving? Was the pilot trying to kill them or was someone forcing a fast descent and landing?

The lockers were all locked, but one of the cabinets was open and in it was a screwdriver. Percy tried to pry the hinges of the cockpit open, but they resisted his efforts with thick plastic. The latch refused to be tampered with. Percy’s ears were popping frantically as the plane continued its descent.

“Hey!” Percy screamed, banging on the door with the handle of the screwdriver clenched in his fist. “Hey!”

Suddenly the plane seemed to level off a little. Looking out the window again, Percy could see that they were not diving quite so alarmingly. However, they were still going down and far below, Percy could see a strip of black against the tan of the desert. A runway?

Someone seemed to be in control of the plane now, because it circled around the runway to come in at an approach. However, it was still doing so incredibly fast. Was this normal? Percy usually never paid any attention when he was flying. But he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to be landing here or not. If it was the pilot that was flying, were they coming down to meet the would-be assassins? Was Hayden flying? Did the man even know how to fly? What was going on in that cockpit?

“Hayden?” He continued to pound at the door while the plane continued down. He attached the hinges with the screwdriver, but only succeeded in scratching long curls of plastic away from the covers. Perhaps if he did that enough he would expose the workings of the hinges, but by that time the plane would have landed. Looking out the window, Percy could make out the small control tower at the end of the runway. The plane was going to land in a few seconds and then how long would he have? Who was going to be waiting for them outside? He continued to chip futilely at the plastic.

“Hey!” he shouted at the door.

The jet touched ground with a rough bump. Percy was thrown to the ground again as the entire plane rocked. Hardware groaned throughout the plane. Percy crawled to the bucket seats and hid behind one of them, trying to see both the sidedoor to the outside of the jet and the door to the cockpit at the same time. He held the screwdriver, his only weapon, ready in his hand, not sure what to expect.

The plane taxied to a stop and the engines quieted. Percy gripped his screwdriver tightly, feeling his sweat slide along the plastic a little. His leg throbbed where it had bashed against the locker. He could hear the heartbeat at his temples and feel it thrumming in his throat.

The latch to the cockpit door clicked and Hayden stepped out, Percy’s gun thrust in his waistband. He looked around the inside of the jet, then nonchalantly retrieved his briefcase, as if he had simply been to the restroom or get a coffee. His jacket was a little disheveled, but there was no blood, no signs of a struggle. But Percy could smell gunpowder. That had been a gunshot he had heard.

Now not even sure if Hayden was on his side, Percy stood up from behind the seat. Hayden didn’t look surprised to see him, or even that he hadn’t been in his seat when Hayden had first come out of the cockpit.

“Are you all right?” Percy asked, shifting his grip on the screwdriver. Hayden eyed him.

“If you were so concerned, you could have come into the cockpit and checked on me.”

“I couldn’t. I banged on the door.

“No one seemed to answer, did they?”

“No. I couldn’t open it. The door was locked.”

“The plane is filled with tools to avoid problems like that.”

“They were all locked. All I could find was the screwdriver.” Percy found himself babbling like a little child trying to explain an event and realized just how scared he had been. He had been trying to convince himself that he was acting very level-headed in all of this, but this inane babbling at a stranger he wasn’t even sure was friendly put it all in perspective. “I tried to take the hinges off the door, but it was too strong.”

Hayden examined the hinges in question, seeing the deep scores in the plastic.

“You do realize that you could have used that screwdriver to pull the hinges off one of the cabinets, or opened my briefcase?”

Percy looked around. The lockers were indeed just like ordinary school lockers and would have yielded easily to the screwdriver. And Hayden’s briefcase was an ordinary briefcase with a pathetic latch that could have been popped open with a little lever action. Percy blinked.

“What is this, some sort of test?”

Hayden didn’t even look at him as he opened the door of the jet.

“No, which is very good for you, since you would have failed miserably.”

“What happened to the pilot?”

“He’s dead.”

Percy ran to the cockpit door.

“He’s not in there,” Hayden said.

He wasn’t and the plane was missing one of the panels of its windshield.

“What…”

“Come on, Fonway,” Hayden called. Percy stumbled out after him in a daze. Hayden handed him his suitcase and Percy took it silently. Hayden led the way out of the jet and Percy followed meekly. Hayden didn’t have his, Percy’s, gun out anymore. Percy could see it tucked into the front of the man’s waistband. However, any thoughts of trying to take it from the man were fleeting and rather lackluster. The thought of the pilot being… sucked? thrown? out of the windshield to become a smear on the desert landscape was sobering.

As they walked toward the control tower, Percy noticed that there was no one in it. The windows were fogged with dust. Grass grew in cracks that spiderwebbed across the runway. Paint was chipping off the little outbuildings around the perimeter. The whole place seemed as though it had been abandoned for years.

However, the lock that Hayden unbolted from the door of the control tower was brand new, as was the keypad at the next door. Hayden punched a complicated sequence that Percy couldn’t hope to follow into the keypad and the door swung open.

Percy had been expecting the dusty interior of an outdated control tower, but instead beyond the door stretched a long staircase, brightly lit with a never-ending line of fluorescents. Hayden motioned for Percy to go down. Percy obeyed, his suitcase scraping the handrail as he went around the older man and started down. Behind him, Hayden closed the two doors and Percy could hear the keypad beeping as more numbers were punched in. Then footsteps came down the stairs after him.

The flight of stairs was even more awkward than the plane flight, even if it was only a few minutes as compared to hours. Percy had no idea what to expect at the bottom of the stairs and Hayden wasn’t in front of him to lead him or to confront anyone who might be down there. Instead, the older man was pressing at his heels, the spry sound of his footsteps reminding Percy of how heavy his suitcase was and how dull and heavy his footsteps sounded in contrast. The silence beyond their footsteps was oppressive. Percy was coming down off his adrenaline high and was hyperaware of every little creak of the stairs. Where there still people out to kill them?

“Why were those people trying to kill me?” he asked. His voice squeaked past the lump in his throat.

In contrast, Hayden sounded completely in control. Percy was too nervous to try and look around at the man, but he was sure that by now the ma’s oversized jacket was straightened and his gray hair combed or something.

“They were not trying to kill you,” he said in his carefully controlled voice. Percy noticed now that the older man had a bit of an accent. It was very faint and Percy couldn’t quite identify if it was regional or foreign, but it was there.

“Why?” The fact that he had not been a main target, only a caveat to the main target didn’t make Percy feel any better.

“BAWI has many enemies.”

It didn’t answer Percy’s question, but it shut him up for a second as he digested it. Then they had reached the bottom of the stairs and another door. Hayden pushed past him and pressed his palm to the panel at the right of the door. A red light glowed through his hand, illuminating his flesh, then a green light flashed and the door opened.

Beyond the door was a flurry of activity. Percy stepped through, dragging his suitcase and looking around with his mouth open like an idiot. He and Hayden stood on a balcony overlooking a room filled with dividers separating it into dozens of small cubicles. The industrious hum of hundreds of keyboards clacking at the same moment filled the room with a sort of white noise that was permeating, but not overly loud. A swarm of people moved throughout the cubicles, like ants, on a seemingly random but highly organized fashion. No one seemed to stumble, no one seemed to linger. It was like a human beehive.

It took Percy a moment to realize that Hayden had moved on. The man was heading across the platform to a small elevator at the end.

“Fonway!” he barked and Percy hurried to catch up with him. His suitcase banged against the frame of the elevator and it crowded them both against the wall as the door slid closed. Hayden punched a button and the elevator shot down at a rate that made Percy’s head spin. It landed with a heavy thump and Percy stumbled a little, his suitcase knocking around the interior of the elevator and punching him in the stomach Hayden seemed unfazed and just stepped out when the doors slid open.

They had gone down below the level of the busy swarms and were instead in a black hallway that was nevertheless brightly lit. It was a queer paradox of a space, so black and yet so light. It almost made Percy dizzy.

A group of men were at the end of the hall, gathered around a door set in the far wall. They seemed to be huddled around something and were talking in low, furtive tones.

“Corvette!” Hayden barked in a voice that somehow didn’t seem any louder than his normal conversational tone, but nevertheless carried down the entire hallway and cut through the huddled group. One straightened and looked at Hayden with a frozen expression, like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Y… Yes sir?”

“This is Percival Fonway.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the man said, coming towards them. He seemed incredibly relieved.

“This is Wilson Corvette,” Hayden informed Percy, “ your partner.”

“Uh…” Any objection or word Percy might have had was cut off as Wilson enthusiastically gripped his hand and pumped it furiously.

“Finally! I’ve been waiting for this for way too long. Where are you from? CIA? FEBway?”

“FEBway?” Percy couldn’t seem to think with the man furiously pumping his arm.

“Guess you’re not from there then, eh?” Wilson seemed to have a smile that reached from ear to ear at a forty five degree angle, making him look simultaneously naïve and sly. Percy finally extracted his hand from the man’s and set his suitcase down.

“Fonway,” Hayden barked again, heading down the hallway and turning his head back, “hurry up.”

“Here, I’ll take that,” Wilson said, taking the suitcase from Percy. “I’ll catch you when you come out,” he called out after Percy as he hurried to catch up to Hayden. “You gotta meet the boss lady.”

Lady? Percy didn’t have time to think about it as Hayden parted the ranks of the men still near the door and opened it. Percy noticed vaguely guilty looks on their faces as he passed by, but then he was in another paradox of a light black room and the door was shut behind him.

There was a desk in the middle of the room, black just like the walls. A fishtank sat on one corner of it, containing a single blue fish that hovered in the clear water. Behind the desk sat a slender woman who looked like a hawk. Her short black hair was combed fiercely back and she stared at Percy without blinking. Her eyes were gray, but so light it was almost silver. She was reclined back in her chair and had her ankles crossed with her heels resting on the surface of her desk. She was wearing black leather boots.

There was a moment of silence as everyone stared at one another. Then the woman slid her legs off the desk and Hayden moved to stand behind her chair, like a squire or manservant.

“Percival Fonway,” the woman said, in a voice that indicated she was not asking at all, but was almost stamping him with his identity. “You’re late,” she continued.

Percy blinked.

“Uh… Excuse me, but I just got here.”

“I do believe you were given two days to appear. It’s been five, therefore you are,” here she looked at a silver watch clasped around her left wrist, “seventy two hours late, am I correct?”

She looked up at him and linked her fingers on the desk in front of her.

“If you wanted to piss me off, you should have been prepared to deal with the consequences.”

“Who are you?”

“Marie Swailer. I’m the boss around here. What I say goes. When I say ‘jump’, you don’t even take the time to say ‘how high?’ before you jump. When I tell you that you have forty eight hours to appear, I do not expect to see you seventy two hours after that, do I make myself perfectly clear?”

Percy just blinked. Marie didn’t seem fazed however. She even seemed to have forgotten he was there. She leaned back and put her crossed ankles back up on the desk. Percy noticed that one of her boots seemed misshapen, as if pressed out of shape from the inside. She was reading off a piece of paper and didn’t seem to notice his scrutiny. Hayden wasn’t looking at him either, but was instead leaning over Marie’s chair, reading along with her. She didn’t look up at him, but pointed to something on the sheet of paper and they carried on a short muttered conversation. Percy couldn’t hear what they were saying and he shifted his weight nervously, not sure what to do now.

“Excuse me…” he finally ventured, but stopped when Marie looked back up at him as if seeing him for the first time. He hesitated, but she did not speak. He couldn’t tell if she was waiting for him to continue or was silencing him with her gaze, but when she didn’t look away, he forged on.

“What exactly is going on here?” he demanded. “I get some paper in the mail that tells me I have to report to Detroit in two days, when I don’t even know who it’s from or why it was sent to me. I didn’t ask for a transfer. I was expecting a promotion. My chief didn’t even know who it was from. Who is BAWI and who are you people to come and take me from my house? Who is trying to kill you? Who are you?”

She just blinked slowly once.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “There seems to be a misunderstanding here. You are Officer Percival Fonway, are you not?”

Percy was stunned.

“Have you been listening to me?”

“Officer Percival Fonway?” she repeated.

“Yes, that’s me!” he shouted, exasperated. “Now who…”

She cut him off with a sigh that was as effective as a slap in the face. She looked back down at the paper and pointed to something for Hayden’s benefit. He nodded.

“This was a waste of my time,” Marie declared, running a hand through her black hair, slicking it back unnecessarily. Percy blinked.

“A waste of your time? Do you know how long it took me to get here?”

“Detroit wouldn’t have taken you nearly as long. As it is, you have wasted three days of my time and three days of your former partner’s time as we waited for someone who was completely incompetent.”

“Former partner? What… Where do you get off calling me ‘incompetent’? You don’t even know me.”

“Actually, I know you very well. In times of crisis, you panic and freeze up. You are incapable of thinking outside the box and generally behave like a spoiled six year old.”

“Why, you…”

“This is not the position for you, Officer Fonway.”

That was it. She swivelled her chair around and slid to a black filing cabinet in the corner. But instead of filing it, she pulled out a lighter and set the corner of the paper on fire. She held it by the corner and let the fire consume all the way to her fingertips before she let go of the paper. It was completely gone before the flames touched the black floor and she crunched the ash under one of her leather heels. The wisps of smoke rose to the ceiling and were sucked up by a ventilation fan.

“This way,” Percy heard Hayden say. As Percy had been transfixed by the fire eating the paper, the older man had opened another door leading out of the office.

“But… I…”

“Now, Fonway,” Hayden said in his voice that wasn’t yelling but still demanded immediate attention. Percy had to consciously keep himself from literally running to obey. Hayden made him pass through first, then closed the door behind the two of them.

The hallway beyond this door was white and there were many doors leading off it. Hayden opened one of them seemingly at random and led Percy through it. It opened into a garage that smelled of motor oil and stale potato chips. A jeep, dusty and with a chip in the windshield, was the only vehicle in the musty room.

“”Here,” Hayden said, handing Percy a plastic bottle full of a red liquid. “There’s food in the trunk and a few more jugs of water. Now get out of here.”

“What?”

“She decided this was a waste of her time.”

“You’re just going to send me out on my own like this?”

“This is the option that lets you live.”

“What is with you people? You can’t do this! It’s illegal.”

“Get in the car,” Hayden reiterated, handing Percy the bottle and in the same motion pulling the gun out from his waistband.

“That’s my gun,” Percy reminded him.

“Get in the car,” Hayden said again, pointing the gun at Percy. Percy obeyed reluctantly. He set the bottle in the cup holder. The keys were in the ignition already.

“Turn it on,” Hayden said, moving to a wall of the garage and pushing a button there. A rumbling filled the room and dust filtered down from the ceiling as one wall lifted up to reveal a long ramp heading up. Faint rays of sunlight filtered into the room, distilled by their trip from the outside.

“You can’t just send me off like this. I’m going to tell everyone about this. You’ll have cops breathing down your necks in three hours.”

“Drive out now,” Hayden ordered, completely ignoring Percy. Percy reached for the key, then hesitated.

“No,” he said.

“Fonway, it is in your best interest to drive away now.”

“What, you going to kill me? me? You guys were the ones that wanted me here. You drag me all the way out here and don’t even give me a chance. I want a chance-“

His words were cut short by a bullet punching through his cheekbone and out the back of his skull. He stayed upright for a moment, and then slumped over in the driver’s seat, blood pouring down the front of his shirt.

Hayden walked over to the jeep and turned the ignition. The jeep sputtered to a start. Hayden set Percy’s foot heavily on the gas and the engine roared as the gas lines were flooded. Hayden reached over and set the gear to ‘drive’ and stepped back as the car lurched forward and screeched up the ramp. The sound of the engine echoed back through the garage and then was gone.

A spot of blood lingered on Hayden’s gloved hand were it had brushed Percy’s chest. He examined it carefully, then stripped off the gloves and shoved them into his pocket before punching the button again to close the garage door.

Marie didn’t look up when he came back into the office.

“Is he taken care of?” she asked, scribbling something onto a sheet of paper.

“Yes.”

“Have the Northman take care of the people back home.”

“Good choice.”

Now she did look at him.

“Really?”

But he didn’t say anything more. He strode to the main door and out into the light black hallway. Wilson was still there, sitting on Percy’s suitcase.

“How’s…” Wilson’s voice trailed off.

“You’re going to have to wait a little longer for that partner,” Hayden told him. “She decided that he wasn’t right.”

“What about his suitcase? Did he leave without it?”

“Add it to your collection,” Hayden called back to him as the older man continued down the hallway.

Wilson looked down at the suitcase and sighed.

“This is starting to get ridiculous,” he muttered, then reached down and hoisted the suitcase off the ground.

A/N: And thus Percy, who was my main POV character in my original story idea, was killed. Yeah, that doesn't bode well for only two chapters in. But I hated the guy and he simply had to go. Fingers crossed that he's the only one to die like that.