• The wonderful Bob cover is made by the lovely The_Creative_Fire - when she sent me this, I confess I fell out of my chair from laughter. It was absolutely brilliant. Dear Bob. Give her some love, guys, •

Sitting on my couch with Vince on the floor in front of me, I was stitching up his shoulder where a bullet had went through and through. Why exactly, I was unsure. My orders were to clearly kill him, but I couldn't just yet. With him dead, I'd never know what he had done with Zac.

I pulled on the suture and made Vince hiss when I dragged the needle through his skin. He had refused any painkillers, had only wanted a sip of my gin. I had said no. He didn't deserve it. Coming here asking for my help after nearly ruining my career? I was this close to just letting him bleed out, if it wasn't because I needed to know about Zac. "What did you do to him?"

"To who?" Vince asked, grimacing when I pulled a little harder on the suture than necessary.

"To Zac," I spat. "Our tech guy, he's missing. He's the only one who could help you get that tracker out of the USB."

"But I don't have the USB anymore, dolcezza."

I huffed and cut the last suture, then taped a large medical bandaid over his fresh stitches before getting up. "You're a goddamn asshole. I hope know how lucky you are. The bullet missed everything important, so you'll be fine in a few weeks. Sadly."

Vince slowly got up as well, wincing as he did. His whole body was battered black and blue, looking as if he had been pushed through a meat grinder. "Thank you."

"For calling you an asshole? I got so many more vulgarisms where that came from."

"For patching me up. Thank you for that."

"I don't know why I did that," I muttered to myself, going into my kitchen to wash off the blood on my hands.

I heard Vince take a seat on my couch again, grunting painfully as he did. "Because you like me. It would make it easier on yourself if you just admit to it."

I scoffed. "Besides from the sex, give me one good reason as to why I should like you. You stole from my country, murdered good agents, abducted me, broke into my apartment, made my fish your accomplice, then proceeded to abduct our best tech guy."

"Bob was willing and I didn't take your guy," Vince replied. "I wouldn't need to, we have our own guy."

"No one is better than Zac."

"Didn't say he was better, just said we had our own guy."

"So why are you here?" I finally said, drying my hands off and walking into my living room again, crossing my arms. He looked pathetic sitting half-upright in my couch, completely battered. "Surely you didn't just come here because you needed stitching."

"We need to talk."

"Great. You can start off by telling me who did that to you."

"The Russians."

"The ones who found your envelope?"

"They had been tracking me for days, it was only a matter of time before they'd get to me. So I let them."

"You let them?" I snorted, walking closer. "You let them do that to you?"

"Maybe not exactly giving them a permission slip, but I thought if they got their hands on me, got to beat me a little and see I didn't have the USB anymore, they'd take a step back."

"So after they did that to you, you escaped and came here?"

"I missed Bob."

"Shut up. You're sure you weren't followed?" I asked skeptically and automatically went to my window to glance out.

"I'm sure, tesoro. Now come sit, I need to talk to you."

"You already are."

"I want to look at your face while doing so, even as much as I like glancing at your ass."

Irritatedly, I turned around and glared at him. I then slowly walked up to him, watching his lips twitch as I sat down in my lounger across from him, my arms still crossed. "Talk, then. Why did you come here?"

Vince leaned back, then fished out the USB from his pocket which I had hidden inside my smoke alarm. "It's time we discuss this."

I wasn't even going to ask him how he knew where I had hidden it. It would only bring him too much satisfaction explaining himself. "Are you finally going to tell me what's on it?"

"I'll do you one better. I'll show you."

I lifted a brow. "How do you plan on doing that, exactly? If we plug it in, we activate the tracking device."

Vince laid the USB down on my coffee table, then winced as he leaned sideways to pull a suitcase out from under my couch, one I had no idea how long had been there. It wasn't mine, that was for sure. He put it down next to him on the couch, then turned back to me. "This suitcase contains all that you need to know."

"All that I need to know," I echoed. "So am I to assume you won't tell me everything?"

"Only what's essential to you."

"Right. Well, I'm listening."

"You won't get any names," He said, clicking the suitcase open and begun laying out about two dozen photos on my tiny coffee table. "Just pictures."

"Alright. Just pictures," I said, glancing down at all the photos he was laying out for me. Some looked like mugshots while some might as well have been from social media. "Who are these people?"

"These are all people who have been victims of inhumane trials and prosecutions," Vince told, sliding out three of the photos, emphasizing them for me, "Especially these three."

"That's a shitload of ink that kid on the left there has."

"These three are the reason AISE, aka I, have been contacted," Vince continued uninterrupted. "They requested our help and protection to circumvent the corruption of your government."

Now my interest was piqued. "Alright, you have my attention. Start from the beginning."

Vince sat up straighter, grimacing as his injuries bothered him. Then with a deep sigh, he begun; "At an early stage in their lives, all of these subjects were sought out and convinced to join a program that disguised themselves as a new research foundation, when in truth, they were scientists with ill morals."

"Why these kids in particularly? You said they were targeted?" I asked. "What do all of them have in common?"

Vince pursed his lips. "They all have IQ's above 170."

"Christ. I'm listening."

Vince pulled out a folder from his suitcase and then begun ditching out new photos – photos that had my blood freezing and my fists clenching. "The kids were told they were going to participate in new state-of-the-art medical research, that they were going to help them find new cures to various diseases with their smart young minds. This was what happened to them the minute they were taken away."

"Jesus Christ," I picked up some of the photos he handed me. They were photos of young kids who couldn't be a day above ten, who were tied down to chairs with electrodes and had all kinds of shit attached to them. The pictures only got worse from there. Some were pictures of them having these restrainers on their eyelids so they couldn't close them; they had them pushed up to large screens that surely could cause them to have seizures.

But my 'favorite' was a picture of a young boy who looked like a younger version of the guy with tattoos, whom had been pinned down on a table, face down, and was getting a syringe the length of a healthy dick shoved into the back of his head. The picture was of course silent as photographs were, but the kid in this photo was screaming, and I swore I could hear his terrified screams resonating in my ears. I put the photos down again.

"I don't understand. How could their parents allow this? How could the government allow this?"

"The kids in these photos are mostly orphans," Vince told, taking the photos of the experiments back into the folder. "The ones who weren't, the people who conducted this managed to convince the parents that their children would receive the best of care and the highest education. The kids then all signed contracts that legally bound them to their services until that contract expired."

"That's impossible. Kids can't sign contracts."

"No, they can't. But you think these people care about that?"

"But then they're not legitimate," I argued. "These kids, they're free to go whenever they want, the government has nothing on them—"

"The government is the one who's fucking funding this," Vince snarled and punched his fist against the table. "The United States government is paying shitloads for these kids to be experimented on and for it to be done so confidentially. The thing that we don't know is that if it's the FBI, the CSI, the CIA, or if it's the freaking president cashing out from his own pocket to keep their labs running. That's why this kid," Vince tapped one of the three photos he had emphasized, "Contacted us. An overseas security organization. AISE."

I sat there, stunned. There was no way this was true, no way. I knew Americans weren't saints when it came to doing illegal shit, but human experiments on innocent, parentless, genius kids? We couldn't have stooped so low.

But I wasn't naïve either. When it came to covering up secrets, America, unfortunately, was the world champ. I knew shit other countries would kill to know about America, shit that could kill America itself. But this... human experiments on kids... America was built on independence and freedom, and this, what they were doing, was like shitting all over The Declaration of Independence and our founding goddamn fathers that our government was built on. If the CIA was involved...

"Jesus Christ," I said again, palming my mouth. I couldn't believe this. Had I been working for the bad guys all along? "Jesus hell, Vince. Why are you telling me this? I could be a part of it all. Why trust me?"

"This guy," Vince said and tapped the same guy from before, a guy whom if I didn't know any better, looked like an Abercrombie and Fitch model, "Is a computer genius. He must've run a thorough background check on you and deemed you trustworthy, because he contacted us and told us we could trust you. As the only one."

I tried processing that. "But didn't you tell me the stuff you stole was something you guys accused us of originally stealing from you guys?"

His lips twitched. "A diversion. You were not a part of the plan then, so we led you in the wrong direction."

How wonderful to know that I had wasted my time on that lead. But what was done was done, and I could hold my grudges later. "Whatever. So returning to these again," I said, tapping the three photos he had emphasized from the bunch. The inked, the Abercrombie, and the last guy who looked like a surfer with bronze skin and blond hair, "Why were these the special ones again?"

"This guy here," Vince tapped Abercrombie, "Was never a part of the program, but knew it existed. Him along with this guy," He now tapped surfer-dude, "Who wasn't a part of it either, set out to dismantle and stop the program from hurting all of these subjects any further." He gestured to all the photos he had laid out. "The computer genius managed to hack into their records and copy them for his own use, then blackmailed them by threatening to publicize what he had on them to the world, unless they released all their subjects and promised never to harm them again. He drew up and ironclad contract wherein the terms of the agreement was stated. The program, left with no other choice, signed it."

"So they were all freed?" I asked, frowning when Vince nodded. "Why did those guys work to free all these people that they didn't know? Were they just a couple of good Samaritans?"

"One had an affiliation to one of the people on the inside, I can't go into more details than that, I'm afraid. Nevertheless, it made him want to free his friend."

"And he clearly succeeded," I said, "If the contract was ironclad, then why did he contact you guys?"

"The contract stated they couldn't touch them and they haven't, but computer genius here wasn't feeling confident that they would upkeep their part of the agreement," Vince told, his face grave serious as he tapped Abercrombie's photo. "From what I've understood, the guy has recently uncovered data that suggests they're opening up the program again. Only this time, the people they're experimenting on aren't the people whom they've been working on previously. In other words, they are trying to make the records and information he stole useless. They're rebooting, starting up again from scratch with new experiments. What he has on them won't be useful much longer and that's why he fears for all their lives. Their contract is only valid as long as he has something to threaten them with. If he doesn't..."

It started to click in my head. How this young guy managed to get all this information was beyond me. He really had to be a computer genius if he could crack through all those encrypted computers and clearance levels.

"So what was your job, then?" I decided to ask when I had nothing left. "If this guy could hack into anything, why couldn't he just give you the files instead of having you break in here and kill our people for it—"

"He can't hack into everything," Vince cut in. "Not that supercomputer of yours. He would need direct access to it to hack into it. Just like I did to be able to extract the files from it."

"That USB. Did he design it?"

"He did."

"So he knew that you'd have to kill to get through to the computer?"

"You don't seem to get it, do you?" Vince said, leaning in over the table, his eyes piercing. "What those people were doing to those kids weren't normal human testing. They were extracting their DNA and cells to somehow harvest their IQ through them. Then tampering with them, they'd inject them back into the kids' systems and supposedly made them even smarter."

"So what – are you saying they were trying to make superhumans? That's ridiculous."

"No, talking to your pet fish, that's ridiculous," He pointed out, "These experiments... they were beginning to work, Rya. The government was funding them to continue and are now funding them again to restart."

I glared at Vince and he glared back. All of this information was impossible for me to absorb, it all just seemed so... surreal. People thought that my kind of job was from movies and shit, where people went undercover in ridiculous slutty outfits, like I did. Until now, I had called them naïve for thinking it only happened in the movies, and called them stupid for believing in all the other superhero shit they made new movies about every year.

Now, you couldn't exactly call these people superheroes, but if I understood Vince correctly, this science program had been trying to create... mutants. Or at least some sort of other creature where humans were the genetic foundation.

"So..." I said after a moment of intense silence. "You broke in. You stole... what exactly? And then you had to bring it to Italy?"

"I stole the names of all the people who were involved directly or indirectly to that government program, whose lives are in danger and should be granted protection. That, along with the plans for the new science facility they are setting up," Vince said, crossing his arms. "AISE have agreed to help, seeing how these experiments could potentially become hazardous for the whole world if they are continued."

"So you also plan on taking down the program?"

"Sadly, that's impossible. Since the program is your government, the only way to shut it down would be to shut down the government itself. And since we have no intentions of starting a new world war, the best we can do is grant protection to the subjects who has been exposed and work with them to gather enough evidence to rebuilt the foundation of the contract."

I exhaled loudly through my mouth and then ran a hand through my hair. "Alright, so... where do we begin?"

Vince rose a brow. "You're offering your help?"

"I'm trustworthy, remember? I'm assuming you included me in all this for a purpose."

"But you do know what you'll be doing by choosing to help me, no?"

"And I really hope you know that me choosing to help you won't involve us having anymore sex."

His lips twitched again in that stupid smirk I hated. "No pleasure with business, dolcezza?"

"No. If we do this, we do this professionally." I declared. "Lives are at stake here."

Vince chuckled silently, then turned his eyes back to all the photos. "Lives are at stake every day, Rya. That's why we all need someone those long lonely nights to keep our minds occupied on something else."

"Hence the reason I have Bob," I stated. "We need to work on a gameplan. A next move. Plus, I still don't know where our tech guy Zac is. If you didn't take him, then who did?"

"That's not my problem," Vince said, getting up with a wince. "My only focus is doing as I'm paid to do. Getting these names back to AISE and placing them under foreign witness protection protocol."

"So if you only do as your paid to, then we obviously won't be having sex under any circumstances," I pointed out and stood up as well, smirking when he realized his own mistake.

"Clever girl," He said, taking a step closer to me, towering above me. "Have I ever told you I like smart-mouthed women?"

"Actually, you haven't. Between kissing me against my will and nearly costing me my job, the words you've said have been purely spoken through physical acts."

"Do tell me if I need to repeat myself."

I gritted my teeth and pushed him back. "Professional, Vince."

He chuckled, sighed, but then sat down on my couch again. "Professional."

• • •

"Daaamn Oli; Back at it again with the crossovers!"
Haha, joking.
Has anyone figured it out yet, though? Let me know, I wanna see how many of you guys are my little geniuses.