Something Worrying

By
            An insanely annoying mosquito was bothering Ian. He tried swatting at it, but it kept on buzzing loudly in his ear. After swatting around his head once more, Ian attempted to ignore it, and it worked. A second later the buzzing stopped.
            A fifty caliber gunshot resounded in his ear and Ian woke with a start. For a split second he was back in North Africa, he smelt the blood, heard the screams and saw the fires before he was brought back to the present by his phone ringing once more. It was the Colonel.
  “Zdrastvootye” he answered in Russian.
  “Erasmus, you’re late,”
  “Yeah,” said Ian as he looked at his watch, it was well past ten. “I’ll be there in an hour,” he said and ended the call.
            Ed was still passed out on the bar. Ian ran a hand through his hair and got up from the bar stool. He felt in his pocket and pulled out a hundred rand note and a fifty. He smiled at the little bit of cash and headed to his room. He showered, dressed and left in record time, grabbing an apple and a yogurt for breakfast.

            By the time Ian got to the office, he had had an epiphany. He headed straight for Monroe, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the Colonel’s office. He pushed her inside and closed the door behind him.
  “What is the meaning of this?” asked the Colonel.
  “Before you go off on me, check this,”
            Ian took her laptop, plugged it into the projector on her desk and started typing franticly. Finally a map appeared of the whole Gauteng with a number of lines, points and circles.
  “Okay, what do you see?”
  “Piss poor Photoshop skills,” said Monroe coldly, she was clearly in a bad mood.
  “Thank you, I pride myself on being able to draw lines, circles and dots on a map of Gauteng,” said Ian sarcastically.
  “It’s the Thor killings,”
  “Thank you, Colonel Obvious,” said Ian, he could see neither the Colonel nor Monroe was very impressed with him at the moment. “Look, the points are the killings, well the red dots anyway. The blue dots are the locations he was when the killings took place,”
  “I thought we only knew where he was the time before last?” said the Colonel.
  “No, the Scorpions only know of that time. I’ve got a VI at home which I set up to look for this guy in particular,”
  “How can you track him?” asked Monroe.
  “Simple, I’ve got access to the sky-nail platform, don’t ask how, I’d rather not lie to you both. Okay, so minor access to the sky-nail platform with which I managed to backtrack some of the packets far enough to get locations,” Ian said pointing to the map.
  “So what are the lines?”
  “An attempt at trying to figure out what this guy was thinking. The circles are about ten kilometer radii but they don’t overlap, ever. This guy is good, very good,”
  “Better than you?” asked the Colonel.
  “No, I don’t think so. I’ve uploaded part of the VI to Betsy-”
  “You did what to who?” asked Monroe.
  “Betsy is the code name for the sky-nail platform, and I uploaded part of my tracking VI,”
  “To a government installation,” the Colonel reminded him.
  “Yes, well, desperate times and all that. Next time he tries to use it, we’ll have a lock on him, hopefully within a few seconds. It will warn us as soon as he tries to access it, anyway,”
  “Will we be able to stop him from killing someone?”
  “Maybe, I’ll see what I can do about that, but it is a militarised platform and I’d rather not piss off the owners,”
  “Then you’d better not get caught,” said the Colonel, “dismissed,”
            Ian made his way to his desk, across from his partner’s, switched on the PC and plugged in his flash drive that hung around his neck. Within seconds he was set up and adjusting code on his VI to prevent a sky-nail strike from Betsy.
  “Others take me if I fuck this up,” he said under his breath.
            Towards the end of the day, Ian got an email that was very suspicious. He opened it using a set of very complex tools that allowed him to read it without actually executing anything inside the email, what it contained, however, was not to his liking.
  We are closer now, we will find you.
            Ian closed the mail and deleted it, permanently. He looked around, made sure no one else had seen it, switched off his PC and left.

  “We’ve got problems,” said Ian as he got home.
  “You’re telling me,” said Dev. He and Ed were sitting at the kitchen island, a letter between them.
  “What’s that?” asked Ian and Ed handed it to him.
  We are closer now, we will find you.
  “The Others,” said Ian.
  “Fuck the Others,” said Devon getting up from his seat, “if they want to try their hand at this again, I say let them come,”
  “This isn’t North Africa, Dev,” said Ed solemnly.
  “It’s damn near close enough,”
  “If only,” said Ian.
  “Look, we managed to survive the last time,”
  “At what cost, Dev? Last time it was a village in North Africa, what do you think it’s gonna be this time? Where did you find that letter?”
  “Mail box,” said Ed.
  “Fuck,” Ian swore, “I got the same message in an email at HQ,”
  “You really think it’s the Others?” asked Ed.
  “Who else?”
  “Wait, if they knew where we lived, why haven’t they tried to kill us yet?” asked Dev.
            Just then the front door opened. All three of them jumped to their feet, grabbing a knife each from the knife block. JR threw up his hands and the three of them relaxed a bit.
  “Don’t sneak up on people like that,” said Dev, dropping his knife back in the block.
  “Why are the three of you so jumpy?” JR asked.

            They decided it best if Dev stayed there the night. They would each take a turn at watch, but told JR as little as possible about what was going on.
            Dev had first watch, Ian after that and Ed last, as he felt he’d get more writing done in the early hours of the morning. Ed came up the stairs and found Ian leaning over the railing looking thoughtfully at the street below.
  “I’m not running,” Ian told Ed. “I will not leave her, Ed, even if I have to kill every last one of them,”
            Ian turned to face Ed and for the first time in years he saw the cold, determined face of the Dragon hidden in his friend. Most times, it scared him, but now it was comforting.
  “We won’t let it come to running,” Ed reassured him, “now go get some sleep,”

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