There were a billion and one things that could have gone wrong at that point. But that was what he and everyone else had prepared for, right?

Stefan ambled into Abba's penthouse; he was the bull's-eye on a dartboard. Eight men posed before him, guns upraised and loaded, itching to shed some bullets. Benjamin was standing to the right of them, wearing a glare that twisted Stefan's stomach. Stefan decided to send a casual nod his way. Benjamin didn't so much as flinch. On the bright side, now there were just a billion things that could go wrong (the extra 'one' had been the probability of being beaten black-and-blue, or killed, on entry). Stefan advanced towards the grand desk in the odd-middle of the room and sat upright in Abba's chair, looking everywhere except at Benjamin and the soldiers, endeavouring to ignore the eyes burning through his skull.

Abba had cleared her desk of everything – no maps, pens, vials of evil juice – but the high-tech wireless phone on the far right edge of the desk, and a key, for the drawers at Stefan's knee. Finally, he heard Abba's voice, something French coming from the en suite bathroom that was hidden behind the doors of her walk-in wardrobe. She ambled into the room and glanced at the body at her desk, but without fully acknowledging him. She walked towards Benjamin, with a smile that Stefan found discomforting. Abba had been in the shower – the towel that wrapped her body, and her sleek, conditioned black hair verified that. Benjamin returned that smile; he had obviously been waiting for her, too. However, as she laid her hand upon his left cheek, her smile morphed into a scowl.

"Que faites-vous, laissant mes soldats courir après un intrus quand i lest clairement ici?" she queried, monotonously.

Equally monotonous – although his voice had a deeper, ghostlier sound – he replied, "Je pensais que je laisse l'honneur de traiter avec lui pour vous."

Stefan thought he heard the word traitor, and for some reason his first thought was of Dominick in his AIM camouflage. Abba watched Stefan and a leer met the corner of her mouth.

"Your kind really is trouble," she uttered.

"My kin–?"

"Tell those idiots to get back to their posts," she told Benjamin, before her eyes crawled over Stefan. "They need to be alert; Stefan is surely not our only guest."

Meanwhile, Gavin was helping Aimee into the air vents. Listening in on Stefan and Abba's conversation, her focus was lacking. Gavin climbed up behind her, into the opening.

"Aimee, we have to go," he whispered, nudging her over and then sealing the vent with its weighted steel cover.

They crawled through the tight, unending cuboids that were the air vents, their icy surface beneath their palms and shins. Aimee had expected to hear loud, metallic clangs whenever they made contact with the vent, so, admittedly, the quietness of their movement surprised her. She had switched off her earpiece, and Gavin had switched off his, because the sound of Stefan's erratic breaths and Abba's haunting voice was a distraction – a costly distraction that was too painful to bear. They had to silence Stefan out, and tried not to worry, tried not to think about what might have happened once they cut the line, which was easier said than done.

As they ascended a vertical cuboid, Aimee tried to distract them from their distraction. "You know, if I wasn't trying to be serious – due to our deathly situation – I'd comment on how cliché it is that we're climbing through the air vents."

"Because we're spies?" he queried, somewhat knowingly.

"Yes," she answered. "Like, I'll be disappointed if we aren't caught."

He laughed at her remark, and then followed her onto horizontal ground.

"Hiding in plain sight is more effective than you'd imagine."

 Stefan was sitting in a desk chair, held to it by numerous constricted belts. Situated on the desk were a lamp and a wireless phone; both directed at him. Across from him, Abba was clothed and sitting, too, but in a more lavish desk chair with cerise upholstery. They were not in the penthouse on the top floor; they were in a remote room, without windows, and without much space to move around. Stefan was beginning to panic, but he would not show it. This was the plan, right? He should not have been nervous. But being there was not what worried him, it was the matter of how he got there; he could not recall that detail.

"I need a favour from you," uttered Abba simply.

"I was just about to say the same thing, before you knocked me out and all," he replied, in a slurred and croaky waking-up voice.

She leaned forward, her elbows on her desk, as she looked into Stefan's eyes. She was at his eye level – he may even have been a little taller than her – but she was still ceaselessly intimidating.

"I told my daughter that she would be mine, that all of you GINM agents will see it is for the best to hand her over to me. Stefan, if you think this is a game we are playing, I assure you, I will win."

Stefan gulped fretfully, and then, for a moment, there was silence. In this silence, he realised the pain he was in – the developing bruises on parts of his body which he did not know could hurt so severely – thanks to the belts that were ardently mummifying his torso.

"So, what I want you to do," she continued, "is break up with my daughter."

Stefan coughed in surprise. Break up with her? What purpose would that serve? Then again, did he really want to know?

Through the earphone calculatedly hidden in Stefan's eardrum, Dominick whispered, "Aimee and Gavin made it to me. Ready to find Domino Doomsday's 'off switch'."

Stefan exhaled lightly and gave an unnoticeable nod, even though he was not in Dom's vision. Good. The plan was still going somewhat, well, according to plan.

"So, you break Aimee and me up," he diverted Abba. "What makes you think that will change anything? She hates you. You could kill us all and she still wouldn't stay with you."

"That's how it looks, of course, but she will learn the truth about you and your father's organisation. Then, she'll warm up to the idea."

"What are you talking about?"

Abba ignored him and turned in her seat. In an eerie silence, she glanced afore her, her fingers tapping the air, creating ripples of electric blue. It was some kind of touchscreen computer. Eventually, as if she had a sixth sense when things were going wrong, Abba called to the French computer, "Show me Aimee's whereabouts."

At her command, wisps of blue light appeared in front of her face, and then formed a mono-coloured screen of semi-solidity, revealing the room in which Aimee, Dominick, and Gavin stood. Stefan could not believe his eyes, that it was so easy for Abba to virtually stalk Aimee. Boiling inside of him was a disgust he could not dismiss. Now, it was his turn to play his cards – the plan itself was a deck of copious cards to be played.

"I was going to ask you to hold me hostage," he tried to calm down and stated his plan. "I thought maybe you could arrange a trade with my father: me for Aimee. That way, no one gets hurt, everyone gets what they want."

She raised an eyebrow, seemingly intrigued, although Stefan couldn't tell by what exactly. "What do you get out of this?"

"Peace. As long as you swear you'll protect her. If I have to let her go in order to save an entire continent of people, I will."

Abba scoffed, "Even if I took your deal, your father would sooner let you die than hand Aimee over to me. You and I both know that. You, I think, just don't know the real reason why."

Stefan forced himself to remember that he was dealing with a psychopath. Her words couldn't hurt him. He took a breath and looked up from the ground, dead into Abba's eyes.

"Advance," he said, and GINMAs poured into the building, the pit of the fire.

GINM had incredibly skilled agents, whilst AIM had dirty-playing, machine-like soldiers. They would just have to beat AIM at their own game. After all, the heroes always won, right?

Stefan bit his lip; fear at its most intense swirled in his eyes. May. This. Work. he thought. Dear God, may this all end soon.

Abba left the room in a fury to warn her soldiers about the oncoming ambuscade – she was away for a minute at most. Then, she sat right down again, slowly, intensifying Stefan's trepidation. Her elbows leaned forward on the desk, and her fingers crisscrossed under her chin. That action. As he stared at the vehement woman before him, Stefan thought of Buckley.

"So," Abba paused, inhaled and exhaled meditatively with shut eyes, "about that break-up."

For a lengthy while, he didn't respond, it was almost as if it had not occurred to him that she was serious. All he heard, that which had his full attention, was the shouting from out that door, and the enlivened launches of guns, vociferous as the men who held them.

The battle had begun.