Justin
He cursed himself repeatedly.
He was angry for leaving his partner alone to go after a girl.
He was angry for leaving the girl all alone.
Justin couldn’t seem to do anything right just then. Hopping on his bike, he slammed the helmet down, the built-in earpiece already buzzing.
“What have we got?” he asked, speaking into the helmet loud enough to be heard over the roar as his bike came to life beneath him. The rear tire squealed as he spun it in a one-eighty turn before gunning it down the street toward where he had left Connor at the Coleforn Yard.
“Two SUVs and a cargo truck just left the shipyard, all headed in the same direction,” Connor said. “I’m tailing them now. We’re heading down Dynast Drive.”
Justin slammed on the brakes, taking a hard right on short notice. He was tilted so far to the right his knee almost scraped across the ground as he took the corner as fast as he could. The engine whined and he shot forward, resuming an upright position, hunched down into his bike as low as he could get his big frame.
“Okay, I’m running parallel to you,” he said. “Let me know if they turn, and we’ll switch off.”
Connor acknowledged, calling out the cross street as they passed it by. Consulting his internal map, Justin realized he was almost a mile behind them.
Time to close the gap.
Weaving his way into the oncoming traffic lane, he jetted forward, slipping back in front of a big truck as a car appeared in his lane. Horns honked, but he continued on, finding the gaps wherever he could. Connor continued to call out their cross-streets as he tailed the mini-convoy.
Justin considered this. Where the heck would a three-vehicle convoy be going? Did they recently get some new equipment shipped in?
“Left turn on Monarch Avenue,” Connor said. “I’m going straight.”
“Roger that,” he said as the street approached. He made the turn and sped up, making his way forward until he spied the convoy. The big black SUVs were a dead giveaway. They weren’t making any attempt to hide their presence today. Not that they ever did, he mused. But where were they going? This route led away from their downtown headquarters, and it didn’t it take them anywhere near the little three-story safe house.
“Where are they going?” he asked Connor, wondering if the other shifter had any ideas.
“Nowhere that I’m aware of,” he said, the reply coming fast enough that Justin knew he was thinking the same thing.
The headset buzzed. “Bravo, Charlie, this is Alpha. I am en route with Delta. We’re about ten minutes from your position. Any change?”
“Negative,” Justin replied. “Alpha, do you have any ideas where they might be headed?”
Jared’s voice came back. “They’re heading to the industrial warehouse district, Charlie. That’s as good a guess as anything I’ve got.”
Justin nodded, more to himself than anything. He continued to follow the convoy as Jared drew closer.
“Alpha, they’re making a right turn. How close are you?”
“Check your mirror, Charlie,” the answer came back.
Chuckling, he looked over his shoulder to see Jared’s blue truck two vehicles back to his right. Even as he watched, they slowed, the blinker turning to follow the convoy.
The rotation continued as they moved through the city. Connor, Justin, and then Jared all took turns following the convoy. It was a tactic used with great effectiveness to ensure that the people being followed never realized they were.
Finally they turned off the streets into a warehouse lot. Behind him, Justin noticed the sun about ready to set. It had taken them almost an hour to reach their destination, a combination of the distance and the city traffic.
The team parked a few lots down the road. Justin exchanged nods with Alpha and Delta as they disembarked. Together, the four of them approached the warehouse, doing a slow, stealthy circle to see if they could see anyone, but to their surprise, there were no men posted outside.
“The trucks are inside, as well as the men,” Alpha said as they met up on the far side. “Any ideas?”
“There’s a roof we can get on top of,” Justin said quickly. “Set of windows halfway up. Should allow us a view of the inside. Another ten minutes and it’ll be cloaked in shadow anyway, so we shouldn’t be visible.”
Nobody else had any better suggestions, so the quartet followed Justin as he pointed it out. There was no easy way up to the roof. The metal lip was a good twelve feet off the ground. With his enhanced strength, Justin could get a portion of the way up there on his own. But to get high enough to actually be able to scale it? He needed some help.
“J—Delta, you and Bravo give us a boost,” Jared said, pointing to the two shifters and the base of the wall.
“Charlie, you’re up first,” the leader ordered as he turned, looking around to make sure nobody could see them.
They were on the east side of the building, and with the sun now below the horizon, shadows abounded everywhere, concealing even the large shifters from most eyes.
“Ready boys?” he asked, taking a few deep breaths as he prepared.
“Yeah, yeah,” Connor grumbled, settling down into a crouch, his arms interlinked with Josh’s.
With a nod, Justin backed up two steps, then moved quickly toward them. He planted his left foot on them and jumped. At the same time they exploded upward, throwing him straight up into the air.
Justin cleared the roof with ease, landing on a crouch on all fours to spread his weight around and reduce any noise. The metal creaked a little, but for a man of his size, he could move about very lightly when he needed to. Looking around, he signaled the all clear for Jared and then moved away from the lip. No matter how stealthy he was, two of them in the same area was going to be more than he wanted to make the roof work.
Together the pair of them crept forward to the set of windows. The closer they got, the slower they went, until they were just inching themselves up the slight incline.
“They aren’t tinted,” he hissed at Jared. The big man just nodded and slowed his progress even more.
His heart was beginning to beat rapidly. Justin urged it to calm, not wanting it to make any noise against the metal roof. That was silly of course, because it would never happen. But he always got like that in high-tension situations like the one they were in now.
Nobody had a clue what was going on inside. There could be a veritable army of Agents, ready to take the entire team down, for all they knew. Caution was the name of the game just then, which was fine with Justin. Although he had gone through the same training as his fellow Sentinels, and had done so before, he preferred it when things didn’t have to escalate to violence.
No, that wasn’t exactly true. It was what came after that gave Justin a hard time. He found that out of his entire team, he had the hardest time with taking someone’s life. It wasn’t that he thought less of them because they could do it with seemingly fewer reservations than he had. It was just that he had never grown comfortable with that aspect of his world.
It’s never going to go away, it’s never going to stop. But the day I no longer regret having to end someone is the day I lose my humanity.
He often wondered if his team felt the same, if they had the same nightmares and self-deprecating thoughts. But how did he approach them over it? They all seemed to be at ease with what they were doing. Why was he so different?
Justin had killed before. He would do it again, if he was forced to. That was understood, and he wasn’t trying to fight against it. The question that plagued him was why? Why was it necessary for him to kill? Why did those who did bad things force him to go down that path?
He just wanted to know why.
“Charlie,” Jared hissed, getting his attention.
Shaking his head, he focused on his team lead. Now was not the time to get distracted. If he did, the entire team could be put in danger because of his lapse. He gave Jared a questioning look. The leader motioned inside.
He wanted to know what Justin thought.
His blood seemed to be flowing so fast because of his racing heart that he could hear it roaring through his system. Steeling his nerves, he craned his head up just enough to be able to see inside the warehouse.
The building, to his surprise, was mostly empty. The far side held a number of pallets of something, stacked cleanly and several layers high. The vehicles they had been tailing were pulled up in a shallow arc to the left, their headlights on, serving as illumination. The rest of the warehouse appeared to be empty besides a few random boxes, a small pile of empty pallets, and other such detritus that accumulated in unused places.
In the middle of the circle of light, he could make out several figures. Half a dozen or so men stood near the vehicles, clearly just armed guards. It was the two men in the circle that caught his eye.
“That’s Baldy,” he said to Jared. “The one who kicked the door at me.”
“You’re positive?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” he replied, the pair of them speaking so lowly that they could barely hear each other. They didn’t whisper. Whispers were harsh noises that could carry a long distance, especially if anyone inside had augmented senses, including the Extremis Agents.
That had been a rude surprise. Finding that the Agency had managed to isolate certain shifter traits, and give their men enhanced versions of things. Connor had already encountered one of the men that had been given a serum that took his strength beyond anything a normal bear shifter could match. The Sentinels had yet to come across any other variations, but they knew it was coming. It was only a matter of time now.
“So who is our mystery man?” Jared mused aloud.
“Whoever he is, he’s human. Not Extremis, nor a shifter either.”
“I don’t like this,” Jared said. “Too much going on these days.”
Justin just nodded his agreement. The Agency was up to something. That much was clear. They just didn’t know what. Looking over at Jared, he frowned. The other shifter was pulling something out of the pack he always wore on his back.
“What is that?”
“A camera,” he said, letting Justin get a clear look at it. “One that should, hopefully, catch our mystery man’s face.”
“What about the flash?”
“No flash on this bad boy,” he said smugly, holding it up to the window and depressing the trigger a few times.
The camera whirred and clicked, but that was all.
“Okay, let’s go before they disperse and catch us. I want to get these back to Madison as soon as possible, so that she can start trying to figure out who it is.”
Justin didn’t argue with him. The pair returned to the edge of the roof, slipping their legs over the side and then dropping to the ground with matching dull thuds. Then they went to their vehicles, split up, and headed back to headquarters, each taking a separate route to keep its location as secret as possible.
He tossed and turned that night, with one word playing over and over in his mind.
Shay.