One of the nurses at work knew a guy. A guy who worked in that grey area between the law and everything else; someone who could potentially help solve Juliette's situation. What exactly he would be doing was unclear, but she hoped that they would be able to clear things up when they met. Then, best case scenario, Mallory would be out of Diego's care for good.

However, she found herself standing in the first level of a recently cleared out building in a bad part of town all alone. It was ten minutes after the time they were supposed to meet, and he still hadn't shown up. Distractedly, she checked her phone, trying to figure out if she had gotten the wrong address.

The building looked like the one that he'd described, though. The building had been inhabited just a few weeks before. It had been an office or apartment of some kind, but it was being torn down in order to build some sort of larger building on the land. It was quiet, but the noise from the street outside could still be heard if you listened closely. Perfect for a meeting where you didn't want someone to overhear what you were saying. 

The woman glanced behind her, shrugging her shoulders in for warmth. They'd turned the heat off in the building a while ago, and the unseasonably cold April that they were experiencing made for a horrible draft.

While she waited, she flicked her fingers, creating little balls of light that travelled back up into her hands. It was a stupid nervous habit that she'd kicked in her early teens, but had a habit of resurfacing. It was barely noticeable, but it wasn't something that she wanted other people to see. Luckily, she was alone. 

Alone; save for the feeling that she was being watched that she just couldn't quite seem to shake. 

Wick fingered the pistol under his jacket contemplatively. It wouldn't even know he was there before it died. Sent back to hell where it belonged. That was not what he had been told to do however. It had a request, or so their intel suggested. He had been told to hear its request first. To convince it to join the fold. It would either prove a useful tool, or a useful experiment. His superiors didn't care which. The idea of it being a more useful corpse had never come up. Its absence as a listed option was all he needed to know. His hand fell away from the firearm.

It was certainly patient. More patient than most. He'd been watching it for ten minutes from a hidden camera's feed. Surveillance equipment requisitioned for the mission. There was some interference near her hands, but it was at best indistinct on the cellphone screen. He decided he'd seen enough. The agent buttoned his coat, checked his holsters and bag for his guns for the tenth time, and started moving. He'd been sitting three rooms away on a hidden, encrypted, bluetooth connection with the camera. He had found one of the few chairs left in the building to wait in. He'd already been there two hours in the unseasonable chill. Never could be too careful when potentially dealing with the devil touched.

His dark shoes thudded dully along the carpet as he approached the door. In an active office, it would have been silent. In an empty building, it was ominous. He couldn't care less. He was on a sacred mission, he didn't need silly effects to lend him gravity. Wick adjusted his dark cobalt jacket to minimise the risk of exposing his holstered weapons, then pushed the door open with gloved hand. He stood in the dim doorway a moment, observing the woman.

"Ms Reyes. You may call me John. We understand you are in need of something we may be able to provide. Is that correct?" He entered the room as she spoke, circling to stand between her and the window, silhouetting him and masking his features somewhat. That was the intent, anyway. His breath misted lightly in front of him

The sound of footsteps made Juliette turn away from the window that she'd been looking out of to face the man that had just joined her in the otherwise empty room. There was nothing remarkable looking about him, which was almost remarkable in and of itself. If she had seen him in any other context, she noted that she probably wouldn't have payed him any mind, or remembered him at all.

However, their situation was a little bit different. The man had just appeared from the inside of the house. Not the outside, like Juliette had been expecting. That meant that he had gotten there before her and allowed her to stand there, waiting for him while he was in the house. Had he been watching her? What had he been doing before he'd come out? She shrugged her coat closer together at the close, feeling rather uncomfortable with the idea of any scenario that came to her mind.

On some level, she noticed that the light she'd been creating had stopped as soon as the man approached, but she didn't pay that fact much mind. Instead, she chalked it up to nerves. She would have purposely stopped when she knew he was there, anyway. She didn't really care to let strangers in on the fact that she was a mutant.

>>"Ms Reyes. You may call me John. We understand you are in need of something we may be able to provide. Is that correct?"

He already knew her name. This was definitely the man that she was supposed to be meeting, which made her feel a little better. Perhaps he had just been surveying the building, or something. 

"That's correct," Juliette nodded slowly, pivoting on her heeled boots in order to continue to face him as he circled the room. She glanced around him, trying to decide whether to come out with the information or not. For all she knew, the whole thing could have been a set up, and she wasn't talking to someone that could help her at all.

However, she recognized that this was an option that hadn't presented itself anywhere else. If she wanted things to happen, then she would have to trust the man that was standing in front of her and not pass up the situation. She cleared her throat then looked him straight on before continuing. "There's a legal matter that I haven't been able to solve through... conventional means. I was told that you might be able to help?"

Wick regarded the creature coolly, his shadow falling over it. It seemed uncertain. Many did when in that situation. By the time people were stepping into the shadowy world inhabited by espionage agencies and black-ops military groups they had usually been burned at least once. The agent didn't care what had happened, all he cared about was what would have to happen. He brought a hand up so his thumb pressed in under his chin and his first finger rested along his lips, deciding how much of a threat the woman would be.

The Reyes thing spoke. It was vague at best, avoiding specifics. It was the classic opening move most people used, yet it was pointless. They would exchange vague nothings back and forth for several minutes, then eventually it would either get to the point, or grow nervous and back out. Sometimes, it caught the inexperienced off guard and fooled them into giving away more than they received. Wick was not inexperienced. He quirked his head, face impassive.

"That would rather depend on the matter." He responded flatly, voice edged with its typical chill. He shifted his laptop case so his right hand rested on the front. He wasn't uneasy, no, that was the wrong word. He was simply prepared. He wouldn't have time to draw and fire before it closed the distance, if it chose to. He'd need to fend hit off long enough to draw and tranquillise. While they were certainly out of the way, a gunshot would be clearly audible a whole block away. He didn't need that sort of attention. No, if it went hostile he'd tranq it and tag it.

>> "That would rather depend on the matter."

Juliette narrowed her eyes at the man's response. She'd assumed that the man would be briefed on her situation to some extent. After all, that was why they were in contact in the first place. Supposedly, they were supposed to be able to fix situations like hers. Perhaps, she considered, she was speaking to a lower rung agent who didn't know many of the details. Hopefully when everything was sorted, she would be shown to someone a little more qualified.

"I need my sister to be removed from my father's guardianship as soon as possible," she said, making the situation as plain as she could. She'd learned a little bit of legal jargon over the course of her attempts to move Mallory, so she employed some of it to make it sound like she knew what she was saying. She didn't care for the way that the man was looking at her, but she figured that if she was at least using the same language as he was, he wouldn't be able to judge her for that.

She matched his cool gaze and picked at her thumb. She'd been screwed over by a lawyer before, and she wasn't about to let it happen again. Just because she was living on a nurse's salary and didn't know a great deal about the subject did not mean that she wasn't willing to fight.

"Is that something you can do?"

Wick noted the nervous picking of the thumb. Good, such as her should be nervous of him. The agent's eyes didn't waver from the creature's while he considered how best to approach the woman. The uncertainty never leaked to his face. So far she didn't seem to respond well to intimidation, too proud not to fight back. Honestly, kindness likely would have worked best, but it made them appear weak. The girl was not a rival agency, they did not want her underestimating them. They wanted it terrified of them.

"It is." He said after a moment, voice perfectly level. "Our ability is not in question. Retrieving Mallory from your father will be a simple matter. What is in question is how this can be made worth our time. All things have a price, and we are not given to charity." Wick's eyes flickered to her hands meaningfully, then back to her face. "So Miss Reyes, what can you provide us."

The Agency didn't have that information, and they needed it. The hell-spawn that went skulking about in secrecy were hard to assign a priority and designation to. They wanted to know how this one could best be used, and they wanted it tagged. They would be collecting on its debt, whether it liked it or not.

The man already knew Mallory's name, which meant that he had been testing her before. Why he was doing that, exactly, Juliette had no idea. There really didn't seem to be any particular purpose in testing her as he was. It still made her shudder to think of what he had been doing before when he was watching her from somewhere inside the building.

>> "So Miss Reyes, what can you provide us."

Juliette did her best to keep herself looking sure and unwavering. She'd been expecting that question. In fact, she'd been prepping for that question.

She didn't do a ton of research on the organization, but she figured that they'd be like just about every other place and want money. Lots of it. She didn't have a lot of money, but she was willing to try anyway.

"I have a few thousand in my account that I can give to you right away as a down payment," she replied. She'd been saving for a long time, but between rent and other expenses, she hadn't been able to get as much as she'd wanted to saved. However, it was enough to make a sizeable offer for a first deal. "I'm willing to work at it, though. Hell, I can even give you a percent of my income, if you'd like."

Sure, that would cost her some financial security, but it was worth it to make sure that Diego never laid another finger on Mallory. Anything was worth that.

Wick was not a man given to emotional outbursts at work. Laughter was for the showboats, only serving to intimidate. Still, a hint of a smile edged onto his lips. It lacked true mirth and wilted well before his dark eyes. It was the smile of a man offered a price so far from appropriate it was almost insulting. It was the smile of a man who now knew his opponent did not truly know the game. Lacked the nuance of the moves. The chessmaster against the amateur.

"Money, Ms. Reyes, is insignificant. What you could have saved more so." His voice became even chillier, his barely perceptible smile slipping away to leave his face once again the impassive mask. "What we need are skills. Abilities. Whenever we want. Whatever we want. Until we say your debt is payed. That is the price. Otherwise, your sister stays where she is. That, we can also arrange." Once again the agency had outwitted the devil. His agents had come to them, revealed their weaknesses.

Now they could make her an offer that she could not refuse. He was confident they wouldn't hand the sister over until they were done with the satan-spawn. If they ever were. Yes, she would be under their control, and she would do as they said. Though he had complete obedience to his superiors anyway, such plans only served to redouble his trust in them. He knew that at the end they would do the right thing with the mutants that were left too. It was a glorious future they were guaranteeing, free of the devil's newest influence on mankind.

God willed it.

The smile was impossibly unnerving. There was something about it that let Juliette know exactly what he thought of her. Exactly how little he thought of her, really. His eyes lacked the emotion of a regular person and instead held a look of someone who thought themselves to be far above the rest of the world.

Her shoulders fell as she listened to him. They didn't want her money. Instead, they wanted something else from her. Something she could do.

"You want my powers," she said solemnly, providing the words he'd been dancing around. She raised her hands to her head and ran them through her hair, trying to think straight. It wasn't like she went to great lengths to hide the fact that she was a mutant, but she also didn't display it on billboards. They'd contacted her because they knew she was a mutant, which meant that they'd been watching her. If she'd felt at all uncomfortable before, that feeling was multiplied tenfold.

She felt as though someone had just driven a stake through her heart. They knew that she was a mutant, and they were using that information against her. From the sounds of it, if she said no, then they were going to make it impossible for her to ever get Mallory out. If she said yes, though, then they were going to use her to do who knew what. 

However, there was a large factor that made one option outweigh the other. If she agreed to do what they asked, then she would have Mallory. She wouldn't have to worry about what would happen if Diego got angry or drank too much. She would never have to live in fear again. There was nothing that they could make her do that would make that fact any less important. 

The woman threw her hands up in the air and then let them fall to her side. "I can't say no, can I? But you already know that, don't you," she sighed heavily and then stared angrily at the man in front of her. Her life and her privacy had already been invaded, and she was being forced into a horrible situation. However, she knew the payout would be better than anything he had for her.

"What would I be doing?"