Something Brewing
“Do I even want to ask, do I?” asked the
Colonel. Ian had phoned her.
He had realized that running from the Others would be
pointless. Sure they might have another ten years of peace, but ten years isn’t
that long when you have to reinvent yourself.
“Thank you for coming,” Ian said.
“Yes, well, don’t make a habit of this,”
“Of course not,”
“You and your friends should get out of here,
and I don’t want to see you at the office until tomorrow, AFTER the funeral, is
that understood?”
“Yes,”
“And get one of the paramedics to take a look
at that eye,”
“I’ve got my own doctor for that,” Ian said
with a smile.
“What should we do with her?” asked one of
the Scorpions that came to assist with the clean-up. He had restrained Melisa.
“Keep her locked up somewhere,” Dev said from
the EMT van.
“Yeah,” Ian agreed, “we might need her
later,”
Half an hour later Ian stepped into the emergency room as
he had done almost a week ago. Danny saw him, then noticed the wound and led
him to an open ward where she could treat the wound.
“How did this happen, don’t tell me Ed shot
you again,” she asked as she was cleaning the wound.
“No, some Others agent cut at me, but I was
faster than he could swing,”
“Not fast enough it would seem,”
“It could have been worse,”
“I guess, this is going to leave one bad ass
scar, you know that. You’ll be picking up women left and right,” she said very
matter-of-factly.
“I don’t want women, just need you,” he said
and kissed her on the cheek.
“Hold still, before I sow your eye shut,”
“You free tonight?”
“Now, working extra shifts, but I’m free
tomorrow night,”
“Good,”
Ian went to the funeral the next morning. It was a
beautiful ceremony, but since Monroe had asked to be cremated it wasn’t a very
long ceremony. After the service the people who were closest to her stayed
behind sharing memories of her life. Ian left soon after the service, he was
eager to get back to work. He needed to find Thor, but he’d need the Colonel’s
support.
“That was a very moving eulogy,” he said as
he entered her office. “Hopefully you’ll be able to do the same for me, one
day,”
“I hope to retire long before you die, Mister
Erasmus,”
“What’s going to happen to Isabel?”
“I’ll adopt her. Monroe didn’t have any other
family, at least not here in South Africa. I think she mentioned a distant
granduncle or something in the States, but Isabel will be better off with me. I
have a daughter of the same age, and it’s the least I can do,”
“Yeah, so anyone find anything on Thor yet?”
“No, I’m afraid not. If we don’t get a break
soon, he’ll kill again, and now the media has got wind of this…it’s a
nightmare,”
“What if I told you I knew who his victims
were, or at least how they are all connected?”
“What do you know that we don’t, Mister
Erasmus?”
Ian looked around, then closed the door to the office and
closed the blinds.
“What I am about to tell you cannot leave
this room,” Ian said seriously.
The Colonel held up a hand to silence him then flipped a
switch below her desk. Ian noticed the camera in the corner of the room power
down.
“Continue,” she said.
“The men that were looking for me yesterday?
They belong to a secret organisation. I used to work for a similar organisation
known as the Agency. Completely independent from every country but we did work
for anyone who asked. And who could pay.
“We weren’t mercenaries, per say, but more
like the Scorpions. We’d investigate and then react, with appropriate force.
The Others, the agency that sent the men yesterday, they’d been enemies of the
Agency for years, even before I joined.
“The Others are bad people, where the Agency
routed out corruption and espionage, they created it. Thor is targeting Others
agents for some reason, that’s his MO,”
“Any idea why?”
“None,”
“Does no one at the Agency know?”
“The Agency is dead, I think almost all of
the agents are…” Ian said and suddenly realised who might be behind it, “I
think I’ve got a lead,” he said, got up and headed for the door. “I’ll tell you
later, if I’m right,” he said and left.
On the drive home, Ian started running through the names
of the agents he had known at the Agency, as far as he knew they were all dead.
But that was a very short list. Luckily he knew here he could get a relatively
complete list of agents.
“Ed!” Ian shouted as he entered the house.
“Edward!”
“What!” Ed shouted from the second floor
landing.
“Where’s that yearbook you made of the Agency
before North Africa?”
“You mean that yearbook you said was a stupid
idea because it linked us to countless war crimes?”
“Yes, that one,”
“Basement, there should be a box marked Super
Ducky,”
It was at this point that Ian realized that Ed was only
partially dressed. He also noticed a few other things; there were two glasses
of half-drunk wine on the counter, high heel shoes at the base of stairs that
did not belong to Danny, or Ed(at least Ian hoped) and a bulge in Ed’s jeans,
of which the fly was down.
“Ah,” he said “Sorry, I’ll leave you to
your…frolicking,”
Ed nodded and disappeared back into his room while Ian
made his way down to the basement. He didn’t have to search very long for the
box, as with everything in the basement, if you stumble around for a minute or
two it’s bound to fall on your head. Or your foot if you were unlucky.
Inside he found the leather bound journal that Ed had
made, it was filled with photos. He made his way back to the kitchen where he
sat down at the island and started flipping through the journal. As he scanned
though each photo, he marked each member that he knew to be deceased, and those
he was unsure of, he Googled.
An hour later Ed stalked down from the second fool and
Ian had gone through every photo in the journal. Apart from their photos, there
was only one other man that was alive.
“Robert,” Ed said somewhat confused as Ian
punched in a number in his phone.
“Hello, Thor,” Ian said when the man answered
and he heard a cup break in the background on the other end of the phone. “The
Dragon wants to speak to you, face to face. I’ll even be so friendly as to let
you choose the location of the meeting,”
“Very well,” said Robert, Ian could hear
tension in his voice and could see shock on Ed’s face. “I’ll send you
coordinates and a time. See you tomorrow,” he said and ended the call.
Ian lowered his phone and closed the journal.
“Robert? He’s Thor?” asked Ed.
“Yeah,”
“Are you insane, you just gave yourself over
to him, do you realize that?”
“Come on, Ed, you know me better than that. I
always look at things logically. Always have a plan,”
“That you do,” said Ed.
“Aaliyah asleep?”
“No, just not coming out. We weren’t really
expecting company,”
“Yeah, sorry about that, dude,”
That night, Ian took Danny out for a romantic dinner,
after which they returned home and spent most of the time on the roof in the
company of Ed and Aaliyah. They were the first to retire, leaving Ian and Danny
alone.
“I found him,” Ian told her, “the man that
killed Monroe and the others,”
“So it’s over,”
“No, but it ends tomorrow,”
“That’s good news,”
“If all goes as planned, yes, but…what I have
to do tomorrow, it’s dangerous, and-”
“Marry me,”
“What?” said Ian, somewhat surprised by the
sudden life altering question.
“Well, not tonight, I just meant. You’re
talking like you might not come home tomorrow, and I’d much rather have asked
you than-”
Ian placed a finger on her lips to silence her, looking
deep into her eyes and smiled.
“Not even death will keep me from coming back
to you,” he told her before kissing her.
After that, they headed inside to enjoy another night
together. And they made sure that if it was their last night together, it’d be
one they’d both remember.