Three weeks ago...
---------------------------

Sanctuary.

The shelter for mutants existence was not exactly a secret, but what happened inside was anyone's guess. Ever since Harlan took control of The Crow's Eye Investigations however, any place that fostered mutants living or working together was suddenly of his interest.

He thought of letting Burke handle this, since it was simple surveillance but he later changed his mind. He didn't know how many mutants lived in the place and how many of them were telepaths or could detect the presence of a human snooping around, so Harlan decided to do the surveillance himself. If anyone ended up rapping on his car's window, he could always claim he wanted to join the place but not without checking it out first.

The detective was parked a decent distance from the main entrance and he carried a camera with a telephoto lens. The camera was placed over the dashboard with a sweater on top to hide it somewhat and whenever he noticed a visible mutant, he'd snap a close up picture and file it for later perusal. He'd also take pictures of normal looking folks going in and out through the golden doors of the place but there were lapses of time when no one was coming or going. It was during one of these lapses that he glanced at the windows of the building and noticed a woman in one of the rooms.

Could it be?

Harlan pulled the camera off the dashboard and aimed it at the woman, using the zooming function as far as he could. The woman's face showed up on his screen and the detective grinned. She was very beautiful, with gorgeous lips and eyes and a dark mane.

She was also a wanted woman.

She ducked inside just before he could take a picture but that didn't deter him. He lowered the camera and started to change the lens with a smaller one, for closer shots. Once that was done, he called his office.

"Penny Mae, I need you to send me the pictures of missing women cases we've gotten down the grapevine, between 15 and 25 year olds... yes, I know that's not your name, but listen to me, I think I've got a positive ID on someone. I'm sure I've seen her face in our files before..."

And how could he not? The pretty ones were always the hardest to forget.

The heels of Almas’ boots clicked sharply against the sidewalk as she strolled towards the Sanctuary, ripples of invisible shades following closely behind her as she went. She’d been job-hunting, that day, and was rather worn-out. She wanted for nothing more than to fall onto her bed and lay there until dinner. She slunk inside, said a brief “Hello” to Lisa, and strolled back towards her room. She snagged a few stares, courtesy of the fancy attire and relatively human appearance, but Alma quickly navigated the halls regardless, without being stopped to converse.

She made it to the door of her room, unlocked and went in. As soon as she crossed the threshold, she kicked off her heels and padded across the room in her nylon stockings, standing before her window to take a look out. It was sunny, though the light was sinking in a late afternoon arc. Alma leaned on the sill and sighed, pushing a hand through her hair. She’d earned some frumpy-clothes time. She drew away from the window and wriggled out of her skirt and blazer, dropping them in a pool on the floor. The blouse underneath was shed and replaced with a tunic-styled t-shirt, and after the nylons were shed, cut-off jean shorts took their place. Alma had earned this.

She strolled into the bathroom and sighed, grabbing her hairbrush and a Scrunchi. She proceeded to brush her hair out. As she did so, the bodachs began seeping in from under the door, bubbling up like a cup that was overflowing with water. They were murmuring incoherently amongst themselves, and as soon as they spotted their mistress, they drew towards her.

“Hey, monsters,” Alma sighed in Spanish, capturing all but her bangs in a ponytail at the crown of her skull, “Couldn’t leave Mama alone for five minutes, could you?”

She tightened the ponytail and sighed, surveying herself in the mirror. Even with the casual attire and her hair pulled back, she was an attractive woman. Alma smiled and strolled back into the main room, humming as she looked around for something to do. Read, or just nap? Read, or just nap? Either way, she’d earned it.

Flipping through the images on his smartphone of six women fitting the criteria he requested, Harlan found her face staring right back at her. Perfect! He knew he had seen her before.

Her name was Alma Elizondo, reported missing by her family. It wasn't uncommon for mutants to run away from home and end up in Sanctuary or at Xavier's while their parents were left in the dark. The background check corroborated there was real money behind the search, though the person paying for it wasn't a relative.

Huh. The times he'd seen something like this, it was usually because the client didn't want to have his or her identity known, so they hired a middle man to handle contracts. Ma and pa must be loaded if they can afford the trouble, so it was all the better for him. He'd be paid for informing on her location, all he needed to do was verify he had the right woman and send the image with the real address to the middle man.

Harlan started the car, moved it slowly and parked it next to a tree with a large crown, perfect for hiding a flying head popping out of the sunroof. He rolled up his tinted windows, so no one would notice a decapitated body on the wheel of a car, opened the sun roof and calculated the branches he'd need to avoid before popping up at the top of the tree. Once above, it was easier to fly by unnoticed, since people didn't usually look up.

Holding the camera with both hands (tying the strap around the wrist was pointless) he gave one last look around for witnesses before popping his head off his neck and separating his hands from his arms. He avoided most branches on his way up, all the way making a rustle through the leaves that didn't alert anyone of his presence. Once he was at a decent altitude, he flew his head and hands out of the tree, passing over cars and lamp posts, all the way to her window, getting a pretty good glimpse at... whoah!

Oh, now he felt dirty. The girl was putting on shorts and Harlan froze, lest she notice movement from the corner of her eyes. He remained hovering there, enjoying the view for a moment until she got up and headed to the bathroom. It was the perfect opportunity to position himself next to the window, close to one side of it and to the wall, as this gave him a nice angle to the bed and kept his head outside the window's frame, remaining invisible to a casual glance.

Harlan held his camera tightly and patiently waited for her to come out of the bathroom. He heard her say something while inside, but couldn't tell what it was and as weird as it may sound, people talking to their reflections in the mirror wasn't that strange. The chances of her seeing him hiding in this spot when she came out were small, since she was completely alone and likely headed to bed.

Then he would take his shot.

Alma hummed as she pulled her hair back, her bangs escaping the hair-tie in which the rest of her was bound. She let a messy ponytail fall as she strolled back into the main room, humming to herself.

All the while, the human-sized bodachs were migrating across the room, unperceivable to anyone but their mistress. One drew towards the window, poking its head out. It did so thoughtlessly, sighing to itself as it looked around. A little one clung to the full-sized bodach’s leg and scurried up it, before leaping onto the window sill and peering out.

“Ooo!” the tiny squeaked, leaping and pointing downward. The bigger one looked down, and spotted the disembodied head and hands lingering in the tree, the masculine gaze tilted patiently towards the window. But what drew their attention was not, in fact, the head and hands that seemed to be floating, independently conscious, outside the window. What snagged their attention was the shining lens of the camera.

“Oo,” the bigger one agreed. Such a shiny thing would surely please their mistress. If it did not please her, it was still shiny—which meant that the bodachs would like it. In an instant, the two bodachs at the window rippled into the human range of vision, at which point, the larger bodach was already reaching for the camera. It fastened onto the technology, hands-and-all, and pulled it inside, leaving the head behind.

“Yay!” the little shadowy creature shouted, jumping from the window sill to the hardwood floor.

“Yay!” the other little ones chimed-in, gathering at their cohorts call. The bigger bodach surveyed the camera in confusion, its hand fussing with the lens in an attempt to free it. The little ones leapt around its feet, trying to get a hold of it, while the bigger ones gathered around the camera, perplexed.

“What do you guys have there?” Alma inquired, stalking closer. She lightly pushed one of the bodachs aside, so as to get a look. When she spied the hands which grasped onto the camera, she let out a sharp cry of alarm.

“Shi-ny~” the big bodach that had retrieved the camera articulated, looking at her, “La-maaaaa… for La-maaaaa…”

Ever since Alma had been meeting-up with Akshay more, the bodachs had adopted his tendency to call her “Alma”.

“Thank you!” Alma said, though her voice was slightly frantic. The bodachs perceived this, but the one that held the camera permitted their mistress to snatch it up. Quickly, Alma pointed the lens towards the floor, careful not to touch the hands as she ran for the wardrobe. Her only lucid thought was to remove the most bizarre element of the equation, which was the hands. The presence of the camera was also bizarre, but the hands gave her the biggest scare. Alma threw open the door of her wardrobe, pried the hands free of the camera.

Oh god, they’re warm. Like, alive-warm.

With a whine, she tossed the hands into the wardrobe and slammed the doors shut, entrapping the hands within. As soon as the door shut, Alma sat in front of them, using her bodyweight to keep them shut.

The bodachs watched their mistress with quiet intrigue.

Fantastic—she had disembodied hands in her closet, and a camera from God-knew-where.

“Where did you get this?!” Alma demanded, opting to utilize French.

“Out-side,” the bodach said softly. This was answered by a chorus of “outside” from the smaller ones.

He had managed to stay on the side of the window, waiting for her to get inside his field of vision on the bed. When he heard her come out from the bathroom, his fingers tensed on the camera and raised it while his eyes focused on the screen.

All of a sudden the screen went dark.

Oh come on! Now wasn't the time to start having this piece of crap malfunction! Was it the battery or... WHAT THE HELL!?

He never lost the grip on the camera and yet his hands got pulled inside. His eyes went wide as these... gooey black things got their wobbly hands on the device and brought it in to her like it was some sort of prize! He should have known that if the girl was in Sanctuary, she was not the ordinary sort but... black, ghostly shaped, gooey beings is not the sort of thing you expect anyone to pop up with out of the blue! Much less beings that snatch your hands and tech away!

His hands still clung to the machine, not letting it go, fingers unmoving like they had been casted that way, not just because it was an expensive camera he could easily drop as evidence on someone else's room if he let go of it, but also because he knew that if the started moving his fingers around there were likely to be screams.

And there were anyway. She shrieked when she got a look at them.

>>"Shi-ny... La-maaaa... for La-maaaaa..."

The beings could speak, it seemed. He kept his head outside still, not looking for fear of being seen and thinking what to do. The only way to know what was going on inside the room was through his sense of touch.

He felt someone touching his fingers, trying to pry them off. It was warm and... meatlike, so he assumed it was her hands doing the grabbing and pulling this time around instead of the gooey things, so he loosened his grip, yet still tried to not move his fingers too much or float his hands around. He felt his hands getting thrown away and landing over fabric and cloth, then the noise of doors shutting made him realize the hands had been entrapped in a closet of sorts.

>>Out-side... outside...

Oh, great. With his position revealed, he had frantic few seconds to figure out what to do. He was a disembodied head with trapped, disembodied hands, so anything he did was likely to freak her out. Also, he had been caught in flagrante delicto, with a camera outside the window of a beautiful woman in skimpy, short jeans. How could he possibly make this look innocent, accidental or like a misunderstanding?

No, no... he'd have to make a run for it, but not leaving his hands behind. Without his eyes telling him where to push, his hands could end up pushing at the closet wall instead of the doors, so he'd have to take a peek. Or better yet, how about... a scare? The surprise factor might give him the edge he needed to free his hands and zip out through the window as fast as he could.

Harlan breathed in, his mouth way up here opening up as his lungs way down there in the car took in the oxygen. Then he went for it.

"PEEKABOOOO!!!" he screamed as his head flew into the room. The minute his eyes had a sense of the layout of the room, he made his hands fly and push towards the wardrobe door. Alas, she was sitting outside of it, blocking it up with her body and he also noticed one other thing...

THERE WERE A LOT OF THOSE BLACK GOOEY THINGS!

Alma fussed with the unfamiliar piece of equipment—which, in its disuse, had gone into sleep mode. She wasn’t a technophile, or any sort of professional when it came to operating things such as cameras… but her fingers managed to find the power button, despite the trembling that limned them. The screen flickered to life, a little green light switching “on” beside the viewfinder, showing that the camera was ready to be used. The lens focused on the frayed edge of Almas’ jeans.

Now… how to open up the photographs on the memory card…

She sharply demanded where the hands and the camera had come from, to which the creatures replied with an ambiguous, “Outside!”

Alma groaned and looked towards the window, sighing. What if this belonged to a tourist, and these imbeciles had commandeered it from them? That was stealing. Boy, that would be awkward to explain. Alma’s slender fingers found a button that looked like a triangle standing on a point, and pointing to the right. A play button? It sat at the center of four buttons, so that’d make sense. She pressed the button and the first image arose.

Oh look, Andy! He lived up the hall. The owner of the camera had snapped a picture of him through a window of the Sanctuary, from afar. Alma hit the left arrow. There was Julia—Clive—Jon—Melissa—all Sanctuary residents, whose pictures had been taken through windows or at the front door of the Sanc. A very particular kind of person would take these kinds of pictures.

“For once, you brats did something right,” Alma murmured, “Good squishies. Good—“ What was she going to do with this, now? Alma breathed a sigh, and closed her eyes, “Dios mio.”

Something flew through the window and made a loud shout, the final “o” in her sentence becoming a loud scream.

“Ooooh!” Alma yelled, scrambling to her feet, “Oh my god!”

The hands flew forth from the closet as Alma got up and stumbled into the bathroom, slamming the door and locking it from within. She hadn’t quite registered what she’d seen, but her hands had fastened in a death grip on the camera, which was now locked in the restroom with her.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” the young woman muttered to herself, though not imperceptibly, “That was a head. A head. A flying head. Oh my god.”

As a force of habit, the woman set crossed herself before setting the camera on the counter.

Outside of the bathroom, the bodachs reacted instantaneously to their mistress’s alarm. The closet flew open as the hands sprang out, exposing clothes and shoes discarded haphazardly within in. The bodachs, inclined to retaliate, grabbed what their hands could find. The larger ones pitched shoes and shirts at the intruding head, while the smaller ones were clambering onto the bed in an attempt to get closer to the levitating, disembodied body parts.

Alma heard the first shoe hit the wall, and threw the door open, her inclination to chastise them overriding her fear.

“You’d better not break anything!” she snapped, bringing an abrupt halt to the attack. Shadowy creatures froze with shoes and shirts and underthings in-hand.

Alma then saw the head, and the hands, and slammed the door again, re-locking it.

“You’ve got ten seconds to explain yourself, head,” Alma snapped, “Or else I’m snapping the memory card. I saw your pictures, head.”

Well, this could have gone better!

He had been forced to improvise, but he didn't expect Alma to be surrounded by so many creatures! Luckily, his scream and his ghastly entrance had been enough to send her scurrying off in fright, but she took with her the one thing he needed to recover while locking herself in the bathroom.

His hands managed to break free from their imprisonment following the woman's departure from the door, but the gooey things immediately started to retaliate. Harlan tried to block incoming objects to his face with his floating hands while being glad the creepy creatures were throwing stuff like shirts, pillows and such instead of anything packing more of a punch. The only dangerous objects flying his way were shoes, and some of the creatures tried grab him, but Harlan simply raised his head enough to almost touch the ceiling, placing himself out of their reach, including the bigger ones. He was feeling safe at this height, even letting out a grin when he got hit on the face by red panties, but when a heel from a thrown shoe caught his eyebrow, he cried foul.

"Goddamit! Stop that!" he yelled, sending one of his hands to try and grab the offending creature by whatever passed for a neck, but the things weren't exactly solid and he failed to get a grip on it. What the hell were these things anyway!? They looked like shadows turned into Jell-o and Harlan had no clue what he was dealing with.

At that very moment, the woman popped out of the room, demanded her creatures to be careful and before Harlan could launch a hand to try and take advantage of the situation, she locked herself right back in the bathroom

>>“You’ve got ten seconds to explain yourself, head, or else I’m snapping the memory card. I saw your pictures, head.”

Oh, that's just great! Not only would he lose an entire day's work, but a perfectly good memory card and camera. Plus, Sanctuary would be aware of his presence if he tried to do this some other time. On the plus side, the creatures stopped throwing things at him and the detective took the brief truce to try and explain himself.


...


...


Yeah, like that was even possible! His camera had pictures of young mutant men and women coming in and out of the place, some from the windows even. How could he possibly explain that away and not look like some creepy stalker?

Damn it, clock is ticking!

"Don't do it!" he said, approaching his head to the top corner of the door and putting his lips close to the gap between the door and the wall. This way, he managed to have his voice be heard through the door and at the same time, still keep himself away from the creature's reach. One of his hands however, went straight for the doorknob and gently tried to open it, finding it locked tight.

"I'm not a creep" was all he managed to muster at the end of his ten seconds. "I'm... looking for someone. A mutant. I just don't know what he or she looks like" he lied on the spot, quickly realizing... who would look for someone and not even be sure of their gender?

"Two mutants actually. A man and a woman..." he added to the lie as his brain quickly tried to come up with believable details, preferably something that would convince a woman that what he was doing was actually good and deserving of her help.

"I'm a private eye" he said, since telling the truth always helped the lie be less of a lie. "I was hired by a couple to find... their missing baby. The mother claims he was taken away from her by a mutant couple, but she doesn't know their names. I was hoping that having her look at pictures from mutants might help her recognize them. What better place to start than Sanctuary, right?"

Brilliant! She was likely too young to be a mother but judging by the way she handled her gooey things, it was almost like she was playing the role already. A baby always pulled at the motherly instincts, the 'couple' angle explained why he had pictures of men and women and even why he tried to take a picture from her.

So convinced he was that he had pulled the right strings trying to earn her trust... that his next sentence was a fatal mistake.

"Open the door, Alma."

After Alma offered her ultimatum, she went into motion.

“Ten… … nine… …” Alma began to count. She turned the camera off and flicked open the bottom of it, fingers finding the memory card and clicking it out of place, “Eight… …”

She pulled the memory card free, rolled onto her knees, and tucked the card into her back pocket. Alma then closed the bottom of the camera, making sure to muffle the click with the palm of her hand.

“Seven… …” Alma opened the cabinet under the sink, tucking the rather expensive-looking camera behind the cleaning supplies. “Six… …” She quietly closed the cabinet, “Five… … four…”

The head finally spoke-up outside the door, his voice noticeably closer. Alma quietly slid open the drawer, searching for something plastic that she could snap, to get the guy off of her case… and maybe a weapon. She didn’t trust him in the least. All he said was to not do it, and she saw the doorknob turn slightly. He then stammered that he wasn’t a creep.

A not-creep wouldn’t try opening the locked door of a bathroom, genius.

“It’s locked,” Alma announced loudly, her tone accusatory. Her hands were fumbling around the drawers and finding nothing but bobbins and hair ties. What was she going to do, snap a rubber band on his forehead until he had a big, red welt? She was better off with just her hands. There was always the lid that covered the toilet tank, but she didn’t want a homicide on her hands… even if her family could help her hide the evidence. Alma shook that thought away. After this ordeal, she’d make note to get some mace and/or a Taser to put in her bedroom or bathroom. At least then, she’d be slightly more prepared.

So, eliminating the lid that covered the toilet, Alma was left with a plunger—perhaps she could plunger the man’s face, and hope he got some sort of a disease from the germs? Alma sighed. She was so doomed.

The man continued to hesitantly explain himself. That he was looking for someone. He just didn’t know what this young “man or woman” looked like. He then revised that to “a man and a woman” who had allegedly had kidnapped a baby. This bore a smacking of a lie. Though, the man did confess that he was a private investigator… Alma listened quietly to the story, her eyes thinning as she edged silently closer to the door. It was all very touching, but the woman didn’t believe him for a moment.

“I haven’t seen a baby,” Alma muttered, her tone half-believing but entirely misleading. She didn’t buy his story for a moment, but perhaps it was for the best that he thought she did. Alma listened to the remainder of his story, her breaths steady, “Okay…”

She began to reach for the door, to peek out and fix the man with the glare, but then he said it. The final utterance, the last nail in the coffin—he breathed her name. Funny, Alma didn’t recall introductions.

Alma did as she was told, pulling the door open so that it swung in a violent arc. The sudden head bobbed forward unsuspectingly, with the door no longer there to support him. Rather than recoil, Alma lunged forward, grabbing the man roughly by his hair. As soon as she captured him, her eyes searched the room for the hands. She’d bumped one with her hip out of the way on the way out of the bathroom, and the other… there, by the ceiling! Alma crossed the room, towards the bed, where she flung open the bedside table and pulled out a pocket knife. Bodachs stumbled aside dumbly, uncertain of how to react to their mistress’s blind fury. The dark-haired woman roughly pinned the head to the carpeted floor, never once untangling her fingers from his hair.

“Out, NOW!” Alma yelled, looking over her shoulder. Her tone was unyielding, and it sent the bodachs surging towards the door. A larger one fumbled with the door handle, and once it was open, they spilled into the hall, before the door was shut tightly behind them. Now it was Alma, and the disembodied, sentient body parts. She sat with her back towards the wall, facing the rest of the room—so that even if she wasn’t watching the hands, they were in her periphery. She fixed her gaze on the head, her lips thinning.

“I was wondering how long it would be until someone began to look,” Alma said tersely, flicking the knife open with her free hand, and holding it just below the head’s left eye. Her face was dark, her hazel eyes flinty. It would seem that the alarm of seeing a disembodied head had worn off. The “flight” reflex had shifted directions and given way to the “fight”, much to the misfortune of the pinned, disembodied head.

“Let’s try this again, Private Eye. I’m going to give you a question or two at a time, and you’re going to answer me honestly,” Alma said firmly, pressing the flat side of the knife into the man’s cheek, “If I have the faintest inkling that you’re lying to me, Heaven forbid… Well, why make promises when I can demonstrate, hm?”

She turned the knife slightly, knicking the head’s cheek. It wasn’t much worse than a knick one would get from shaving. It didn’t take big cuts to get points across, though.

“Get where I’m going with this?” Alma demanded drolly. She readjusted the knife, so that the man could see it once again, “Lie to me, and you will be punished. Tell me the truth, and you will get rewarded. I might even give your camera back to you. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

The young woman flicked her hair back, cracking a wry smile—it was funny how, contrary to her reservations about violence and her family’s eagerness to use it, how she would resort to it so readily when she felt threatened.

“Since you seem to know who I am, it would only be fair to tell me who you are,” Alma growled, “First set of questions, Private Eye—who are you, and who’s looking for me? And this time, make it convincing.”

Her heart was hammering steadily, but there was no flicker of uncertainty in her expression—variable upon who was looking for her, though, could mean life or death for the investigator. She doubted her friends were organized enough to hire someone to hunt her down, or if they even knew that she was still alive. Her family had the resources and could use them—a rival gang would also have such resources. Alma would either have to kill the man and flee that night, or she'd have to come out of hiding.

Harlan's forehead was placed against the door, pushing it a little and keeping his lips close to the gap, so she could hear him without trouble. His tale had too many holes, but she seemed to be listening to him. The moment he dropped her name however, he knew he had made a terrible mistake and closed his eyes tightly at the sudden realization.

That's when he got blindsided.

Instead of demanding how he knew her name and him coming up with excuses, the door opened so fast, he ended up falling forward and getting caught by the woman's hands. It happened so suddenly, he lost track of where his own hands were. The one trying to open the door got knocked over and he could feel the texture of the carpet scraping on the back of it, while the other he had kept up high, but his head was moving so violently it was impossible to tell them where to move.

His first instinct was to break free and push her away, so he moved his arms and.... hit his car's steering wheel, with his body sitting waaay down there outside in the street and unable to help in any way. His lid portals were strong enough to make his head fly, but not enough to break free from the grasp of a mad woman pulling his hair!

"GRaah! Let me go!" he yelled as the room blurred past him, until he felt the side of his face hitting hard against the carpet. He tried to wrench free then, but she was using some of her own body weight over the other side of his face to pin him down quite effectively.

>>"Out! Now!"

His hands thrashed in the distance, but without having them in line of sight, it was pretty difficult to have them do anything helpful. All he could see from this angle in the floor, was the woman's body towering over him, her thighs and... her shorts and... actually, it wasn't a bad angle to have your head pinned from, if it weren't for the knife threatening to gouge your eye out!

He slowly turned his eyes to the side, avoiding to look at the blurry tip of the blade and managing to see the angry face of the woman holding him down. She was no longer afraid of him at all, that was for sure and he seemed to have triggered a self defense reaction he had not anticipated.

>>“I was wondering how long it would be until someone began to look. Let’s try this again, Private Eye. I’m going to give you a question or two at a time, and you’re going to answer me honestly. If I have the faintest inkling that you’re lying to me, Heaven forbid… Well, why make promises when I can demonstrate, hm?”

She moved the blade away from his eye just a tad until he felt a sharp pain in his cheek. He couldn't help but flinch and grit his teeth. He was totally at her mercy and even if he managed to use his hands to pull or push at her, she'd have more than enough time to disfigure his face.

>>“Get where I’m going with this? Lie to me, and you will be punished. Tell me the truth, and you will get rewarded. I might even give your camera back to you. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

No, not at all, but what choice did he have?

“Since you seem to know who I am, it would only be fair to tell me who you are. First set of questions, Private Eye—who are you, and who’s looking for me? And this time, make it convincing.”

He sighed and breathed heavily, still trying to figure out a way to free himself unscathed but time was against him and hope was dwindling. He moved his eyes around, trying to find his hands. One was on the floor, that was for sure, but where? The other, he was pretty sure was touching the ceiling... or maybe a wall?

Giving his name away was an everyday happenstance. Giving his client's name away? Not so much.

"Harlan Crowe" he said, in a voice that sounded like the progeny of a whisper and a growl. He paused, hoping that having an answer would make her loosen up her grip a bit, but she kept on pressing him against the floor and her knife still aimed dangerously at his eye.

He huffed, focusing his eyes on hers. He knew the client wasn't family and there was a chance she wouldn't even know who the client was, but whatever reaction her face had to the name, he would see it.

"Victor Silva"

The screamed and struggled, begging for Alma to let go, but this only earned him a smirk. Right—like that plea ever got the expected results when uttered by a captive to a captor. He could try, but… really? Did he think she was going to just laugh it off and let him go. Oh hell no. Not after he dropped her name like that. So casually. As if it were common knowledge. It made her insides turn.

He wriggled some, huffing and puffing, eyes rolling about after she voiced her inquiries. He still wanted her to let go, but the woman was a stubborn one. Too bad, for him.

“Well?” the young woman prompted, her tone dripping with dryness. Finally, the man spat his name. Harlan Crowe. She’d have to look into that later. He continued to pant, weighing his options before breathing the second name.

Victor Silva.

Some of the tension that limned her features relaxed. He had given her two decent answers. Were they truthful? Possibly not. But he had earned his first award. Alma tossed the knife aside. It was just out of reach, but not so far that she wouldn’t be able to dive and grab it if the situation called for it.

“Good name to drop,” Alma admonished. Victor Silva was an associate of the family’s, who occasionally ran errands for the Falcone’s when they were errands not worth running by a blood relative. In a sense, it was insulting—they hadn’t sent anyone related to her. It was also understandable, though—for all they knew, they could have been chasing a cold trail. Alma could have been in Europe, for all they knew. They trusted Mr. Silva because he worked expressly for them, and because he wasn’t really involved with the criminal scene. He was a nobody, good for nobody-worthy tasks.

“Any distinctive features about Mr. Silva?” Alma pressed on. Mr. Silva was a bearded man with chestnut-colored hair that was long enough to be tied back into a ponytail. His shrewd grey eyes stared out from behind silver-rimmed glasses. Most notable about him, however, were the enormous gauges in either ear, and the tattoo on the side of his neck, which was a tribal symbol that stretched down to his shoulder. These features, and his six-foot-tall and solid-muscle stature very difficult to forget.

“That is part one of the question. Part two—what about the Sanctuary drew you in? What about this humble little homeless shelter for mutants struck your fancy?”

She liked the name. She knew it as well and there were no longing feelings, no wishes to be found. That meant she was a runaway, most likely hiding here of her own accord. She wished to know what Mr. Silva looked like and that put Harlan in a bit of a predicament.

Burke, one of Harlan's detectives, took the case. He's the one who sat with the man, looked him in the eye and filed the report. Harlan vaguely remembered walking past, stopping by Burke's desk and looking at the pictures Mr. Silva had brought in, since pretty women usually had that effect. Did he pay any attention to the man who brought the pictures? He focused as he tried to remember what the man looked like. He had a vague recollection the man had said something while Harlan had been standing there.

What was it? What did he look like? What did he say?

"Hot babe, huh?"

That's why he knew Silva wasn't related.

"Trust me, he's not your type" he said with a grunt, still feeling the pressure she was putting on his face to keep it pinned down on the floor. "Unless you're into bearded, pierced, tatooed, ponytailed, big bruisers with glasses."

It was that sleazy factor, that cold stare the man had that made Harlan figure she was just a job to him. His face popped into his memory at the most opportune time.

When she asked what drew him in, Harlan couldn't help but huff in disbelief. Homeless shelter? Was she kidding? It may be a secret to some of its inhabitants and to most of the public, but Sanctuary wasn't exactly hiding angels. There were always rumors that the area wasn't safe for humans, that extortions in the area were common and even low life criminals gave the place a wide berth. He didn't know what happened within the walls of the place, but he long suspected that some shady dealings and dangerous mutants lurked among the corridors of Sanctuary. What he knew was mostly hearsay, probably fueled by the common fear humans had of mutants, but hear it too often and some truth must be mixed in between.

"Lots of mutants hide here. Some good, some bad... some very bad. You can't possibly be serious calling this place 'a homeless shelter' because I've heard it's far more than that" he said, trying to gauge how much she knew about the place.

Hmm... was there a chance he could actually plant a seed of doubt on that pretty head of hers? It was worth a shot. Confuse her a little, make her hesitate and next thing you know she eases her grip and his head is aloft again. And once in the air, he'll know where his hands are and then the tables can be turned.

"If you're looking for mutants, this is as good a place as any to start, but it's not a safe place to stay, Alma. Not unless you dance to their tune. Free bed? Free roof? Nothing is free in this world. At some point, they'll want to collect from you. Are you willing to pay their price?"

Who was 'they'? No clue. Was it safe? Who knows? But he made it sound ominous to try and weaken her resolve. The knife was on the floor and so was his hand. If he only knew he could reach it before she did, then things might work differently, but until he managed to get his hands inside his field of vision, they were pretty much blind to their surroundings.

The disembodied head snarkily replied that Mr. Silva was not Alma’s type, and proceeded to describe Mr. Silva in great detail.

The corners of her mouth twitched, faintly at first, before growing into a wry, somewhat dark smile. So this guy had seen Silva before. Sure, Mr. Silva didn’t look like much, but he had a keen head upon his shoulders. Sure, he had a weakness for women, but most hetero-normative men did.

“Oh, so you’re a stalker and a matchmaker?” Alma quipped, “Well, aren’t you a multi-faceted individual.”

She released her grip on his hair, allowing the head to bob up as it spoke of the mutants that hid there. She needed protection—and, now that she wasn’t restraining him, the blade was a reasonable defense.

Apparently the little weasel knew more about the place that she did… sure, Alma had her suspicions, but to hear the word from the mouth of a snitch… it simply reaffirmed it. She kept her face blank and cool, still wearing that wry smirk. She wore the look of someone who was well aware of her predicament, and was gauging the response of the floating head. In actuality, this was new news to her.

“The safest place to stay is the most dangerous place to be,” Alma countered. It sounded counter-intuitive, but it was true. As long as you didn’t make a scene, you would be just fine.

“I keep my head down here,” Alma murmured, “They don’t know who I am. I would prefer it to be kept that way.”

Alma rose slowly, straightening her shirt and surveying the bobbing head.

“You, on the other hand,” she said sharply, “Are an outsider. With a camera. Those two things combined will get you into a world of trouble… and I’m nothing compared to the big-guns that are holed-up here. I propose that you leave.”