The Contract

2: The Contract

Two. The Contract

"He doesn't look up to much," a gruff voice commented, inspecting the unconscious shape lying on the steel-framed bed in the base. Spitelout Jorgensen was an older version of his son with a full black beard, his cold blue eyes remote as he turned away from the lanky shape of the prisoner. "I don't see why we shouldn't just toss him into Hopeless Jail and throw away the key."

"Because-with all due respect-we need his assistance," Astrid said irritably, drumming her fingers on the trestle table across the room from the bed. The room was a small concrete box in a sub-level under a popular bakery. The little base was a satellite facility-because this mission was classified and they couldn't exactly walk into the main HQ with the wanted assassin, Night Fury in their custody. "I would have preferred to have negotiated with Night Fury and come to an arrangement. He has issues with trusting members of the secret service-and this certainly isn't calculated to gain his trust."

"No shit," Snotlout grinned, sipping his coffee. "But he was gonna turn you down, babe, so I just did what any agent would have done..."

"And if you'd mistimed it? He never misses, remember?" Astrid shot back. "He executed those Berserkers without missing a beat! We could have lost you and him!" And only one of them would have been any sort of a loss...

"Not really hearing much gratitude for rescuing the mission, babe..." Snotlout persisted in a superior voice, his self-absorption total.

"You didn't!" Astrid yelled at him. "You probably ruined it-and don't ever call me 'babe'!"

"But...you know you're just aching for me to..." Snotlout barrelled on, not seeing Astrid draw back her fist to punch him.

"Got it," Fishlegs announced from his computer which was set up at on another trestle table adjacent to the door, remotely hooking into the Service systems. Astrid was immediately on her feet, leaning over his shoulder and peering at the screen, her fists still bunched. The large agent had input facial recognition and fingerprint data and the search was whirring through the systems. "Got him," he announced. He stared at the image of the unconscious hitman's face, recognising the sharp jaw, pale skin with a few faded freckles on his cheeks, sparkling emerald eyes and much shorter dark auburn hair.

"Hiccup H. Haddock," Astrid read aloud. "He's former Archi Military-black ops by the sparsity of this biography. Height six foot one, weight one forty, eyes green, hair red-brown. Age twenty-three. Twenty three? Thor..." Fishlegs continued to scan down the page as she stared in shock.

"Family-classified. Special skills-classified. Missions-classified. Unit-classified. Honours-classified. Boy-we're really not getting much from this biography...and the encryption is at Presidential level. Odin-what was he involved in?" Astrid leaned closer and her finger stabbed at the screen, making Fishlegs wince at the sharp jab on his sensitive tech.

"Whatever it was, he decided it was too much," she said in a low voice. "He resigned his commission two years ago-a month before Night Fury appeared." She looked up and stared at the unconscious shape lying on the hard bed. "What happened to you, Hiccup Haddock? Why did you decide to go it alone?"

oOo

The breeze was cold, the snow lying deep on the ground-which was why he had gotten into position in the dead of the night before the latest falls came and buried all traces of his approach. He was in the perfect vista, an uninterrupted view down the slope over the only way out of the man's personal Hunting Lodge. The isolation was a boon for conducting the kind of shady business deals that he specialised in but it meant that there was a lot more geography surrounding the location and far less control of the situation.