"If you called this number, you know who the fuck this is. Don't wanna answer the phone right now; leave a message after the beep."

I sigh. Things would be much easier if Lazarus had decided to answer his phone and report to work, but of course in his typical fashion nothing could ever be so simple. I straighten my tie and push my chair backwards, before standing up and taking a look around my office. Light gray paint on the walls, giving off an almost metallic look; black tile floors; and on the right hand side of the room, a "modern" bookshelf. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Except for one glaring inadequacy, in the form of the man squirming in a wooden chair in front of my desk. I swallow a ball of anger that was building up in the back of my throat, and clear my throat, laying my hands down on the smooth wooden surface of my desk and looking straight at him. This only causes him to squirm more, desperately trying to find some almost comfortable position. A hope that'll never come to fruition, by design. On my request, one of the chair's legs was built an inch shorter than the others and after a night a hatchet, the chair's seat and back were almost guaranteed to give whoever was unlucky enough to sit on it a splinter.

He clears his throat.

"I can explain."

"Please do."

Again, he clears his throat but doesn't say anything. I continue staring at him, keeping my focus locked on his eyes as sweat starts to drip down the sides of his face. In face staining streaks they fall, down his cheeks and under his jaw. Blowing past his throat and disappearing under his shirt. My hands start to clench around the sides of my desk as I lean forward and bend my knees so that my eyes were on level with his. His body starts to tense up and he swallows hard, trying to form the beginning of words with his lips but no sound comes out of his mouth aside from heavy, labored breaths. I shake my head, and push my glasses away from my face to rub my eyes.

"Did I stutter?"

Frantically, he shakes his head.

"Then why aren't you talking?"

"I uh, uhh..."

I shake my head in disapproval, looking down at my desk for a split second before bringing my head back up to meet his eyes. I begin to strafe around the desk, walking towards my guest who seems to have forgotten how to speak English. With each step I take closer to him, the more violently he thrashes in his chair, still trying to find comfort where there is none. Getting right up in front of him, I drop to my knees and use my hands to press his downward so that his feet remain stuck to the floor.

"Did you not tell me you could explain?"

He nods his head yes.

"Then why aren't you explaining?"

"Because, I don't know how to put it boss."

I smack him in the face with the back of my hand. He lets out a groan, saliva spurting from his mouth and landing with small splashes across my previously perfect tile floor. As the drops of spit fall in almost slow motion, his eyes widen and he starts to turn his face back to mine. With a scowl on my face, I flare my nostrils before standing up and walking around the chair and behind him.

"You're giving me two different stories, Percival," I say as he rubs the side of his face that I slapped. "You can explain, but at the same time, you can't. Which is it?"

I reach into the breast pocket of my suit jacket and pull out a pair of leather gloves as he continues to stammer and stumble over his half words. Sliding the gloves on over my hands, I place both hands either side of his head and press against his temples forcefully. Nothing. He doesn't say anything, just more panicky noises. With a sigh, I pull my thumbs from his temples, and press them into his eyes. He begins to scream and yell in agony; sounds that are thankfully drowned out by the soundproofed walls. No one needs to hear what's going on in here, anyway.

"Owwww! Fuck man cut it out!"

"Are you going to give me an answer?"

"I saw the guy!"

That's all he needed to say. I stop and pull my hands off his head entirely, as his shoot up to his face to cover his eyes. He continues to whimper and writhe around on the chair for a moment as I step around where he sits and back towards my desk.

"And?"

"And, I thought I could get some information outta him if he didn't know what I was doing."

"Though, I'm guessing it didn't go as planned."

Back at my desk, I grab the landline phone that lay atop it and dial in a three digit extension number, almost instantaneously putting me in contact with the Organization's Medical Staff. The voice on the other end of the line greets me with a bit of vitriol, such is the norm for that wing. Hardly hospitable, that bunch is. Granted, I don't think anyone involved with our goal could be considered hospitable. I should know, I know them all.

"Send Nightingale to my office."

And with that, I hang up. I look back at my guest and watch with a half smile as his face contorts into a series of increasingly pained expressions, silently hoping that I could have had a camera with me right now. He starts to rise from his chair, though he loses his nerve as I gesture him to sit back down and he does. Too easy.

"Am I right?"

"About what?"

"Something going wrong."

"Yes."

"What?"

He starts off strong, but once again devolves into incoherent mumbling.

"English, please."

"He caught on."

"How?"

"I guess I wasn't being to subtle."

"How do you know he caught on?"

"He gave me a fake fucking name, sir."

"Let me get this straight; this witness I told you to look into, you think he's involved with Ramos' murder?"

He nods.

It appears he's much smarter than I initially gave him credit for. Not much, all things considering, but at least there's a silver lining here. Luckily, it appears as if our suspect, whomever he may be, is about as intelligent as I figured. I wouldn't be surprised if he attempts to take the life of another of the Organization's members in the next 48 hours. Just to show that he feels he's two steps ahead of us. If he's as bold as I think he is, he'll even leave a piece of evidence behind to further taunt us. Oh, glory.

"Very well. Out of curiosity; how did you get him to give you this fake name?"

"Alright, so I got told to follow this motherfucker, right?"

"Mhm."

"So I do. I follow him in my car for like five or six blocks, right?"

"You don't have to keep adding right to the end of your sentences."

"He goes to this park and just fucking sits on this bench staring blankly into space for like five minutes without moving. So, like any responsible citizen, I walk up to him to see if he didn't just die of or some shit. Turns out he's alive, so I just decided to introduce myself."

"Under a pseudonym, I hope."

"Of course."

"What pseudonym?"

"Omar Guzman."

I'll have to assign an agent that name. File it under the records. Give our killer something to go on, a way to trap him. Brilliant work, Percival. Though, those are never words I'd utter to my guest. No, instead I continue my glare that cuts through him and more is more focused on the door, where any second the agent I requested should be arriving.

Just then, a series of rapidfire knocks on the door catch my attention. Right on schedule. I urge Percival to keep on sitting as I make my way across the room over to the door and push it open. Standing just outside the door, surgical kit in hand, is none other than Sophia Nightingale. Not her birth name of course. Easily the greatest asset we got out of the [GANG NAME EXPUNGED], and we didn't even have to try too hard to get her. For his many faults, Lazarus sure does have his way with women.

I step aside and usher her into my office, as Percival's eyes bulge almost out of his skull and he tries once more to stand up. Walking back to my desk, I push him back into his seat. Sophia comes up from behind him and presses her hand around his throat to keep him in place.

"Thank you for your services, Percival. Unfortunately, we no longer require you. Nightingale?"

"Hmm?"

I walk behind my desk and take a seat in my chair.

"Start cutting 'til you find something wrong with him."

---

"So, this is training, huh?"

Luca stated, as his eyes fell upon the coffee table smack dab in the center of his apartment's main room, where set out in a series of cleanly cut lines was part of Luca's coke stash. A white stained razor blade sat adjacent the lines, and a couple of sandwich baggies lay strewn across the table, one of which hung over the edge, about ready to fall.

"And breakfast," Julia said, poking her head out over the kitchen counter and revealing dried blood caked around her nose and lips. "What? Did you expect there to be weight lifting or any actual training involved?"

"Not at all, I just didn't expect you to call my fuckin' daily routine 'training'. Whatever floats your boat, I guess."

"Oh, of course not. This ain't your daily routine."

"It isn't? You coulda fuckin' fooled me."

"Do you normally mix your shit with glass?"

Luca cocked his head, and with furrowed eyebrows and lips stretched into a quivering smile, began to laugh.

"What the fuck?"

"Yeah, I kinda dropped a glass. Then I decided to smash the shards further and then mixed that into the lines. Which is also why there's a bloody rag in the sink. Shit sliced up my nostrils."

"Yeah no shit, that's kinda what glass does."

"Fuck off, it's a hundred times better than the weak ass shit you have on you anyway. Go on, do a line."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained I guess."

Luca leaned down over the table and snorted up a line of the glass/cocaine mixture that rested on its surface. Immediately thereafter, he shuddered and let out an enthused woo, falling back on the couch directly behind the table and slinging his arms out behind the back of the couch. With a deep breath, he let his head roll back atop the back of the couch and released the air trapped in his lungs with a sigh of relief.

"Ah, shit," he said as he felt the familiar sensation of blood beginning to trickle down and out of his right nostril. "Shit works fast, don't it?"

"Just a little," Julia said, tossing a clean rag across the room and onto Luca's lap. "You down for gettin' the rest of this shit up in under thirty minutes? I got a little hungry and decided to order a pizza."

"What fuckin' pizza place delivers at..." Luca started before trailing off once realizing he didn't have a fucking clue what time it actually was.

"Two in the afternoon. Yeah, lotsa places deliver."

"Fuck's sake. Let's hit it."

"Don't have to tell me twice," Julia said as she emerged from the kitchen, bottle of Jack Daniel's in hand and smile on her face. "Oh, and one more thing. The guy who's gonna be delivering the pizza, he's my boyfriend."

"Alright alright, now I know you're fuckin' with me."

"Not at all," she said, falling onto the couch beside Luca and handing him the open bottle. He took a swig from it and slammed the bottle down on the table on the side of the lines opposite the razor blade.

"So, you got a man and he's pullin' in that serious fuckin' pizza delivery money? Shit, you must be livin' the life right now."

"Totally. Not all bad though, he's got a pretty nice house. Don't know how he affords it on his salary."

It's about there when Julia leaned over off the couch, fell to her knees on the floor and snorted up another like of coke. Almost immediately thereafter grabbing the rag and pressing it against her nose for dear life as blood began to flow from previously opened wounds. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here on the couch and wondering how the fuck coke snorting has anything to do with this match and the training that's supposed to be happening.

"Because fuck you Ricky."

My name's Ron, asshole.

"I don't get paid enough to remember your name Rhubarb."

That's not even a name!

"You're talkin' like I should care. Now, less bitchin', more doin' your job."

Alright, fine. As Luca was arguin' with me, he positioned himself around the other side of the table and snorted up the last of the lines on the table, seemingly unaware that Julia had gone on a roll and shot up three in the span of time it took for him to get me back on track. Now, he was busy starin' at the small girl in front of him with his mouth wide open and a seriously confused (see: unintentionally fucking hilarious) look on his face.

"I thought I was the one who was supposed to be training!"

"Yeah, and you're too slow. How are you ever gonna beat Loverboy if you can't even focus on this shit? Maybe hiring Ron was a bad idea, seeing as you're looking to fuck him instead of getting in peak physical shape."

"Fuck you, cunt. Your phone's ringing, by the way."

And just like Luca had said, her phone was ringing. Laughing, he reached over her and snatched the phone off the armrest of the couch where she had left it, not bothering to check who was calling before hitting the answer button and pressing the phone to his ear.

"Who the fuck's this?"

"Um, is my girlfriend there?"

Luca's previously jovial face twisted into a shocked expression as he stammered for something, anything to say. All for naught, as Julia snatched the phone right out of his hand and places it up to her ear.

"Sorry 'bout that, that's my coworker. Yeah, he's got a way with words, I know. You almost here? I'm starving! Alright thanks, love ya."

Julia laughed as she placed the phone back where she had it and turned to face Luca.

"The fuck's up with you? You look like you just heard a ghost."