"What's the situation, boss?"
The voice of Corvo piped into Thorne's ear. Thorne was positioned far behind the target, but close enough he could keep an eye on her as she made her way down the sidewalk.
"She's picked up the pace," said Thorne, keeping his voice low. "She knows something's up."
Thorne was alone for this op, the rest of the crew back in New York and keeping a close eye on the situation from Siler Talon HQ. They weren't happy to be stuck in the city while Thorne did the in-person work, but Thorne had his reasons.
"I don't like this, boss," said Jace. "This op has ‘fucking weird' written all over it. And you're thousands of miles away all by yourself."
"Sweet of you to care," said Thorne, his tone sardonic, "but I can handle myself. And as much as I just love you all's company, I don't think having five shifters down here for a pick-up operation is all that necessary."
"But what if I was looking forward to seeing the sights?" said Hoxson jokingly. "Eat some crawfish, take in some New Orleans jazz…"
"Then you'll have to tell Mick you've got a place in mind when you're deciding on where to go for your honeymoon," said Jace.
"Fuck you!" said Mick and Hoxson in unison.
"Keep the chatter down," said Thorne, his tone stern despite the smile pulling up one of the corners of his mouth.
As the team had their back and forth, Thorne couldn't help but notice that Aurelius was being very quiet. Sure, he wasn't normally the type to join in on the usual team banter, but he seemed even more focused than usual. Thorne put the thought out of his head, not wanting to distract himself with pointless speculation.
He kept a careful eye on Adelaide, moving silently from vantage point to vantage point as she made her way down the sidewalk.
Then, suddenly, she stopped in place and look around.
"What is it?" asked Corvo, apparently noticing that Thorne had stayed in place for a prolonged period of time.
"She stopped," said Thorne. "She's looking around like she's noticed something."
"You think she's on to you?" asked Mick?
"No way," said Thorne. "I'm a good distance from her, and she's not a shifter so there's no way she can pick up on my scent."
Thorne watched as Adelaide tilted her head up slightly, as if taking in something from the air. He'd just said that she wasn't able to smell him, but she was sure acting like she'd noticed something strange. It all struck Thorne as very, very odd.
"I'm getting in closer," said Thorne. "Something's weird."
"Be careful, boss," said Corvo.
Thorne made a quick dash to a waist-high fence closer to Adelaide and took cover behind it. From his closer vantage point, he had a clearer view of the target. Despite himself, his heart skipped a beat as he laid eyes on her.
She was, after all, beyond beautiful.
Thorne's eyes lingered on Adelaide's profile, taking in her slim, pert nose, her full, ripe lips, and her narrow, cat-like eyes. Then his gaze drifted down slowly, moving eagerly along the curves of her body, spending extra time on her breasts and ass.
Girl looking like that wandering around at night, thought Thorne. What the hell is she thinking?
He focused on the safety aspect of Adelaide, but deep down, he knew there was something more to why he was focusing so intently on her looks. There was something special about this girl, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.
She's hot as fuck is what it is, thought Thorne. But that's nothing to get distracted over.
Right as the thought faded from his mind, however, Thorne caught the scent of something on the wind. He held fast for a moment, taking a long, slow sniff of the air. The scent was a strange combination of metal and lilacs.
Thorne recognized it immediately as that of another shifter.
"We got another dragon nearby," said Thorne, his heartbeat picking up to a steady thud in his chest.
He kept his eyes on Adelaide and saw that she'd started moving again. But now she moved at a quick pace, making her way down the sidewalk as though she wanted to get away as fast as possible.
Did she smell that same scent? thought Thorne. No, there's no way – humans can't detect dragons unless we're fuckin' fully shifted and standing right in front of them.
"What?" shot out Jace, her voice worried. "Are you serious? Another fucking shifter?"
Thorne took another long sniff of the air. There was no mistaking the scent.
Fuck, fuck, he thought, wondering if his decision to go this op alone was the wisest.
"Boss, I'm detecting something through the satellite feed," said Aurelius, his prim voice coming clear through the comms. "Movement about a hundred meters to your left, in that abandoned lot."
Thorne's eyes shot in that direction. Sure enough, among the unkempt grass and thick-trunked trees, Thorne spotted something moving. He realized that whoever it was, it was no coincidence that some other dragon happened to be here – they were likely after the same target that he was.
A good chance they wouldn't be too thrilled to see another dragon here, too, thought Thorne.
Turning his attention back to Adelaide, he hurried down the length of the sidewalk, trying to keep pace with her. According to his information, her place was only a couple more miles from where they were currently located. He knew he had to get her before she got home – turning this op into a breaking and entering sort of affair would draw far more attention than he wanted.
There was still the matter of the second shifter, however.
"He's on the move, boss," said Hoxson, his voice tinged with worry. "He's close enough that we can detect him with your sensors."
Thorne shot a quick glance to Adelaide, then to the approaching shifter. He had to make a decision fast – to either swoop in on Adelaide and get her before she arrived back at her place, or to confront the new shifter.
"Boss, you gotta do something," said Hoxson.
Frustrated and not wanting to deal with any distractions, Thorne turned off his comms and started across the street to confront the shifter. He realized that if he was going to take out this shifter, he had to do it while he was still in the abandoned lot, away from any potential witnesses. Thorne rushed across the street, the scent of the shifter becoming more powerful with each step. He came to a stop at the edge of the lot and swept the expanse over with a look.
"Who the fuck is here?" he growled. "Get up and show yourself."
For a moment, there was no movement but the wind through the overgrown grass and the dangling branches. Then, a shrouded figure stood up in the distance.
"Thorne Lewis?" asked the figure, his voice high and inquisitive.
"Who the fuck are you?" demanded Thorne. "Tell me who you are and what the hell you're doing here!"
But the figure stayed statue-still. After a few moments, however, the man stepped forward through the grass, out of the shadows and into the silver light of the moon overhead. Whoever this man was, he was dressed sharply in a slick suit, his frame slender and menacing. His face was tall and thin and all hard angles. His eyes were green slivers, and his hair was as blonde as straw. His slim mouth was twisted into a devious expression.
Thorne knew right away that whoever this man was, he wasn't here to chat.
"You have no idea what you're getting yourself into, do you?" asked the man, stepped slowly toward Thorne. "You simply took the job, came down here, and aren't giving the matter a second thought beyond what you're going to buy with your payday?"
Thorne narrowed his eyes and balled his hands into tight fists.
"Personally, I don't give a fuck who you are and what you have to say. As far as I can tell, you're just some asshole shifter standing between me and getting the job done."
The man only chuckled.
"Exactly what I was expecting to hear," he said. "Thorne Lewis – one of the best mercs in the business, doesn't give a damn about anything but getting the job done. Anything for money."
Thorne was getting more impatient by the moment. He knew that each second that passed was another step the target took toward getting home and out of his reach.
"You here to bore me to death or what?" demanded Thorne. "Because if you're just gonna talk your fucking head off then I'm gonna get the hell out of here and do my goddamn job."
The man held up his hand.
"That's where you're wrong, Mr. Lewis. You see, you and I have the same assignment. That girl, this Ms. Wilson, you're not the only merc who's after her."
"What?" shot out Thorne. "What the hell are you talking about? Actually, you know what? I don't give a shit."
The man shook his head as if disappointed.
"You know," he said, "one day, you might find that your policy of only caring about getting paid wasn't the wisest call to make. You just might find yourself in the middle of situations you don't understand."
The man's smirk then turned into an even more sinister smile.
"And that day could very well be today."
With that, the man darted from his position with lightning speed, cutting the distance between him and Thorne.
Goddamn, he's fast, thought Thorne, struggling to keep tabs on where the man was going. I need to m-urk!
The thud of a fist into Thorne's gut cut him off mid-thought. The impact felt to Thorne like a small semi-truck driving right into his breadbasket at full speed. He staggered backward, struggling to catch the air that'd been blown out of his lungs by the punch. Then, another blow landed, this time on Thorne's upper back. The force dropped Thorne to his hands and knees, and he struggled to regain his bearings. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the sleek, polished shoes of the man as he moved through the grass just to Thorne's right. Thorne was being circled slowly by a predator who was prepared to move in for the kill.
"You know," said the shifter, "when I learned that the great Thorne Lewis was going to be my adversary on this mission, I was a bit worried for a moment. I thought that I might have a little bit of trouble on my hands. After all, you're one of the most ruthless men in the game. How disappointed I am to see you on your hands and knees like this, struggling for breath."
Keep talking, asshole, thought Thorne.
"Oh well," the man continued. "So much the better for me. Farewell, Mr. Lewis."
With that, the man raised his fist in the air, preparing to bring it down hard on the back of Thorne's neck.
But he wasn't quick enough.
As the fist came down, Thorne moved, with expert fluidity, out of the way, the fist crashing down onto the ground so hard that vibrations rippled through the earth. Thorne saw a shocked expression appear on the man's face, his green eyes now wide with surprise.
"Farewell, asshole," said Thorne.
He then rushed in, pulled his fist back, and slammed it into the man's face as hard as he could. Thorne felt the crunch of bone and the tearing of skin under his knuckles, and he knew that his punch had done the job. The man flew backward, landing in a heap among the grass. Approaching him slowly, Thorne saw that man was now sprawled helplessly on the ground, his face a mess of blood.
Thorne knew better than to gloat in the way his opponent did. Without a moment's hesitation, Thorne reached down, grabbed the shifter's neck, and gave it a quick twist. Just like that, the man was dead. Within seconds, the man's body began to crumble into dust, leaving behind skeletal remains. If Thorne had any doubts that this man was a dragon shifter, they'd just been dispelled.
Once he'd confirmed that the enemy was down, he flipped back on his comms and started off in the direction of Adelaide.
"Boss! Boss!" shouted Corvo. "You there?"
"You know I'm here," Thorne said. "You've got all my vitals right in front of you."
"You went out for a few minutes," said Jace. "You cool?"
As Thorne ran, waves of pain ran through his body from where the shifter had struck him. He knew that it wasn't anything to be concerned about, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt like hell.
"Just had to kill some lone-wolf merc, but other than that, yeah, I'm cool."
"We're showing that it's just you out there," said Aurelius.
Thorne thought he might've just been imagining things, but he could've sworn that there was an edge of frustration to Aurelius' voice. But he quickly put the idea out of his head.
"Just me and the target," he said. "Assuming she hasn't gone into hiding."
"Nope," said Corvo. "We got her on the feed right now. She's hoofing it back to her apartment, but she's not there yet."
"Good," said Thorne, still hurrying in the direction that he last saw her. "I'll have her in a minute."
Thorne's mind raced with what had just happened. Seeing some other merc here meant that this op wasn't just some personal project of the Abruzzi – it was something much more than that. And whoever this girl was, she was someone important.
And the way she smelled the dragon scent in the air, thought Thorne. What the hell does that mean? Humans can't detect us like that.
He cleared his mind as best he could. All his attention now had to be on extracting the target without drawing attention to himself. He hurried through the alley leading to the street where Adelaide lived, turning the corner and catching a glance of her.
Gotcha, he thought, running silently as he cut the distance between him and her.
Soon, he was only a few dozen feet behind her. Just as before, she stopped and sniffed the air. Then, she turned around on her heels, a can of mace in her hand and raised toward Thorne.
"Stop!" she shouted. "You take another step and…and…I'll fucking mace you!"
Then she realized just who she was facing down, and her expression crinkled in surprise.
"It's you!" she said. "Thorne! From the bar!"
"That's right," said Thorne before rushing with blinding speed to Adelaide. "And you're coming with me."
He placed his hand over her mouth and rendered her unconscious within moments. The target secured, Thorne hurried toward his ride.