Gods and Monsters

X

John Adam St, London

A few hours had passed now since the team had seen the attack on the lorry, but they still waited as the man's body was removed from the lorry and into a body bag for further examination at Rachel's lab. Rachel gave a smile as she saw Charlie return to the group with some bags of fast-food he had picked up from just around the corner. He passed around everyone's orders before sitting himself between Rachel and Peggy as Rachel gave an early idea of what she thought.

"Well unsurprisingly the gentleman didn't have any ID on him, and so far any other attempts to find out about him have turned up nothing. This man seems to be a ghost, completely removed from the system. The marks on his arm indicate he's been experimented on, but until he's back at the lab I won't know for sure."

Peggy thought back to Reggie's story from earlier; how the Nazis had captured people and done experiments on them to help create the master race. Had something similar happened here?

"Mike, any idea on the lorry? Who it's registered to, where it's meant to be going?" Atlin asked.

"I've just got off the phone with someone from Quantum Tech. Apparently the lorry is theirs, but it just so happens it was stolen this morning, and up until now they had no idea what had happened to it." He said in a tone that made it clear to the others he wasn't buying their story.

They all knew there was something deeper here, but there was little chance they would get too far when investigating a group of costumed hit girls, and one of the world's largest companies with some of the world's greatest lawyers in their corner. They continued to snack on their food before Charlie invited them all back to his when Rachel was done with her initial tests.

Quinn's - Camden, London

Charlie and Scarlett had closed the bar early for the night as the team, along with Atlin's girlfriend Jessica shared a few quiet drinks. They couldn't discuss too much of the day's events with Jessica around, and quite frankly this didn't bother them too much. Rachel entered the pub and Charlie quickly made his way over to fetch her a drink whilst the others continued to chat about whatever trivial nonsense they could conjure up to avoid the subject of the Widows.

As Charlie passed Rachel her drink, she leant in closer to him. "Hear your little friend there helped save the day today too." She pointed towards Winnie.

Charlie smiled back at her. "Ah, well me and her make a good team." They both burst into a fit of giggles which caught the attention of the others who simply smiled back. After they both composed themselves, Rachel turned to Charlie once again.

"Seriously, thank you. Without you this task force wouldn't have been set up, and that would mean a lot of people getting hurt unnecessarily. We aren't perfect, but we do a damn good job at helping."

Charlie was rather stunned by this. It wasn't often he received genuine praise, and even less often he was at a loss for words. He gave Rachel a smile and took a sip of his drink before the two went and joined the others in a conversation about the latest episode of some sappy TV show.

Having never been all that social of a person, Peggy didn't feel too comfortable in such a vibrant group of people, all trying to enjoy themselves and forget the stresses of the afternoon, but Peggy's mind was more active than ever. She thought over every moment, the bomb, the explosion, the Widows, and the man in the van. Feeling a little flush, Peggy left the table for a moment and headed towards the bathroom where she splashed her face with cold water, noticing her pained expression in the mirror. She looked as bad as she felt. Having left the bathroom, Peggy looked over at the group as they raised their drinks in cheers at something Peggy had failed to catch, but she decided not to re-join them, instead wandering through an open door and up the stairs to the first floor of the pub. Charlie's home was an echo of his personality, brash, messy and colourful, with files and folders strewn all over the place, on desks, shelves and even some on the floor which Peggy carefully stepped over as she explored the upstairs further. The files were full of theories and research that Charlie had compiled over a seemingly long time, some maybe even passed down from his father that talked about creatures and supernatural events from all over the world. Whilst skimming one of the files about Russian clones and their use as spies, Peggy's elbow grazed another folder knocking it to the floor. As she went to pick the folder back up, a small packet of white pills entered her eyesight, taped to the inside of a desk.

"Peggy, you alright, love? Mike called from downstairs. She daren't respond so as to not reveal her location, but keeping her eyes fixated on the inside of the desk, she snatched the packet from its place and stuffed it in her pocket as temptation and curiosity got the better of her before she made her way back downstairs, apologising and blaming the delay on a hot flush before continuing the trivial conversation.

Jessica excused herself for a moment as she had to make a phone call to her father back in South Korea as he would just be waking up now, and Peggy followed her out of the door, too stressed and exhausted to do any more socialising for the night. She couldn't stop thinking about the Black Widow and why she had gone after Nick all those weeks ago. Peggy knew she would be hitting the pills later; hard. Going cold turkey had lasted less than 24 hours, but she didn't really care about that now. There would be another day to kick the pills. She passed Jessica and gave her a wave before she got into her car and Jessica began speaking into the phone.

"Oxford Siren." She said into the receiver, before being put on hold for a few seconds as she waited for her employer.

The hold music cut out and a deep voice spoke to her. "Miss Suhyun Kim, what can we do for you?"

Jessica paused for a few moments making sure she was going to go ahead with her decision. The deep voice on the other end of the line waited patiently before she finally decided to speak.

"Let Mr Canterbury know I'll get it done. I'll kill Atlin Eyre." The phone went dead. 

Continued in Part 11...