The engineer was still hobbling a bit, and Dave couldn’t help but wonder if he had patched up the wound well enough. He knew the supplies that he had made the cut with were clean, but there was still the potential that he hadn’t cleaned it out well enough. Bransen had even climbed out of the trunk and stepped on the dirty ground. If Bransen’s wound got infected, they would be fucked. Hospitals were…complicated, with insurance, proof of identity, questions being asked…they were problems that Dave didn’t want to deal with. He might be able to argue that Bransen stepped on a blade, but Dave was not interested in someone asking that many questions. The fewer the questions, the better, and the best way to avoid questions was to avoid going to the hospital, and so Bransen couldn’t let that wound become infected. 

Maybe Bransen just had a low pain threshold, or wanted Dave to feel guilt over what he had done. Strangely enough, though, Dave didn’t really feel guilt about any of it. He had been doing his job, and he had prevented Kit from going completely bat shit on the captive. Hell, he was practically a hero, compared to Kit Marshall. 

After watching Bransen for a few moments, Dave got into the passenger’s side, doing absolutely nothing to adjust the seat. He was courteous enough to put on his seatbelt, but he was more one to shift in the seat, rather than adjust the seat itself to find a comfortable place. In a strange way, their car habits in that moment told a lot about their personalities. Dave was one to deal with the cards he was given. He didn’t think about how to change the circumstances of the situation, but he adapted and he dealt. Bransen liked to have things a certain way. He was more demanding, and he felt like he needed to manipulate the world around him to suit his tastes. He disapproved of what Hawtholders did, and so he had taken their data and ran away with it. He influenced things, rather than letting them influence what he did. Did that make Bransen more proactive? And Dave reactive? That might have been a bit of a stretch of the metaphor. Perhaps Bransen simply adjusted the seat because he was shorter, more neurotic, or an insecure driver.

Dismissing his other thoughts, Dave paid attention enough to get Bransen on the main road before he promptly passed out in the passenger’s seat. Unlike the night before, he didn’t have many dreams. He slept soundly, and heavily; he didn’t even attack Bransen. It seemed like only a few moments before Bransen nudged him, needing something. Dave ignored the first nudge on his thigh, shifting a bit to continue sleeping. When the pestering didn’t cease, and was followed by words, Dave reluctantly opened his eyes and lifted his head. “Is the car on fire? Are there cops?” He asked, his lips working a bit slower than he had wanted, making his words come out a bit sore. His head and neck were damn sore from sleeping in such an uncomfortable position. [i]How had that seemed comfortable when he went to sleep in the first place?[/i] He let out a groan, though Bransen might not be able to understand what he was trying to convey from it, or from his previous words. The sun was still out, though it was beginning to set. Dave shifted a bit and turned to the man, the grumpy expression on his face the result of having just woken. “Yea” He said, finally processing the words that had accompanied Bransen nudging him awake.

Dave removed his arms from the crossed position they had held, and he turned to face Bransen. “We want to keep on the I-80—“ He paused to yawn and then continued, “Basically till we get to the New Jersy Turnpike….That’s another…. 90 miles away…ish, I think…. If we do that, we will be stuck in the city after dark… Even I am not in the mood to do that. And I have no desire to deal with the turnpike after dark. So let’s find a place to crash for the night. In about… an hour, hour and a half. If we start seeing signs for the turnpike, then we definitely get off quickly. I know it’s early, but we both need the sleep. Then tomorrow, first thing we can track down the right people and hopefully be out of the city again by nightfall.” It was an ambitious hope, and relied heavily upon Dave’s former associates not all being in jail, but it was the only chance they had. “Does that work for you?” Dave asked, though he couldn’t imagine Bransen disagreeing—and having any other suggestions worth considering.

--
Kit Marshall was given a few hours to rest and get ready for the meeting. In the meantime, Melissa Thompson had cameras on him. She slept a little, but made sure that she looked impeccable before a single soul saw her. At 7:30 am, she ran on the treadmill in her office, watching three different screens with information about what Marshall had been doing. Kit had gone to the medical wing, and Melissa read the report from the doctor. They gave him acetaminophen, and the report explained that he didn’t really have any lasting concerns. He was not diagnosed with any broken bones, or even a concussion. It was likely that the attitude he took with her was, in fact, he actual attitude. He had been a great disappointment, and the feelings he expressed about Berkman and Tucker the night before made him a wildcard.

Hilda reported that Kit clearly took things very personally, and he likely had gone on a power-trip with this new task. There was a high probability that he would go about the retrieval with a brutal nature, and the chances of retrieving Mr. Berkman and Mr .Tucker alive (and for a proper interrogation) was slim. Also playing against Kit Marshall was the concern Melissa Thompson had that Kit couldn’t conduct an interrogation. He would likely end up killing the pair before they got any information. While Melissa Thompson didn’t know if the pair would even have much information for the pair, she would certainly need to know if any information had been given to others, or copied. 

The chances of Hawtholders continuing to employ Kit Marshall were slim. He was a risk, with his erratic behavior, and his inability to work with others. She certainly wasn’t in the mood to pair him up with anyone else, especially not a stranger who would struggle to control him. The problem with putting a more brutal person alongside him was that Kit might just grow worse, and one person sent to bring in Mr. Berkman and Mr. Tucker needed to maintain their composure and wits. 

On another screen, Hilda was continuing to give Melissa Thompson updates about where Berkman might have gone. Based on what was missing at the storage unit, and the video footage there, she had figured out what Mr. Tucker had taken with him. He had weapons that he could sell off, and he had gotten a fistful of cash. His card had been abandoned, and she could tell that he had committed fully to whatever Berkman’s plan was. After all, he had given away his credit card. While many who ran from the police kept their personal cards and things because they hoped to get back to their lives eventually, Mr. Tucker had literally [b]given[/b] away his entire savings. He could have simply thrown the card in the trash, shredded it, or kept it on his person if he planned to return to his life. Perhaps he was worried that he would make the same mistake as Berkman, and use his card somewhere, leading them right to him. Still, that didn’t mean he had to let people use it until it declined at a gas station.

No, giving away his card was giving away his lease on life. He knew that what he was doing was a death sentence. There was no returning to his life when he had no money, which perhaps made him a bit wiser than Melissa had realized before. There were two distinct possibilities that occurred to her as her treadmill regime ended and she slowed the pace to a walk. One, Tucker had a reason to believe that death was the only conclusion, perhaps because he knew that running wasn’t going to last long. This possibility led to the ending that he was on a suicide run, and somehow felt compelled to sell out Hawtholders before he died. The second possibility that was under serious consideration was that Tucker was running from his identity. He was abandoning the card because he was going to run from ‘Dave Tucker’, and was planning on becoming someone else. 

Going to her pull up bar in the hallway, Melissa Thompson jumped up and began to do pull-ups. “Hilda.” She brought up the AI on one of the screens, glancing over at it in between pull-ups. “Do a search on any reports with Hawtholders on police reports.” She requested. If Tucker and Bransen were trying to take down Hawtholders, then they would [i]have[/i] to go to the police. That was their only option, and they had many contacts with the police. Hawtholders had contracts with the police departments of the largest cities in the United States. They supplied nonlethal riot control supplies for different situations, along with more lethal options. They were even working on prototypes of hanguns that could carry multiple types of ammunition at the same time. There would be two or three cartridges in the gun, and options, like the safety, to switch between the different cartridges. It was going very well, an and the trials thus far were showing that the most difficult aspect to execute tended to be user safety—making sure that it was easy for the officer to tell which option the gun was set to. They had also developed an automatic safety option, which put the weapon back to Safe mode when it was holstered again. With all of the work that Hawtholders was doing with police departments, they had people everywhere. 

Tucker and Berkman’s faces were already all over the television, but Tucker had learned from Berkman’s mistakes, and they hadn’t gotten any leads in the time that the two men had been missing. She knew she was missing something, she just wondered if Kit Marshall could possibly be the man to figure out just what it was. Melissa switched from pull-ups with her arms to hooking her legs over the bar and working her abs as she pulled her body up. She listened to the reports, or lack thereof, as she continued the repetitions. At 9:30 am, she took a shower, and then downed a protein shake before re-composing herself. By 10:30, she was back in the office in a meeting, and at 11:45, she was back in the room where Kit would be returning.

At noon, the door opened and Melissa Thompson watched as Kit walked in once more. He looked much more composed, which was good, because he had drugs and time on his side. “Good afternoon, Mr. Marshall. I hope that you have rested well, and had time to see a doctor as well.” She said, not bothering to say that she was sure he had done such, since she had already read up on his meeting with the doctor. As it was, she had no reason to continue to invest in Mr. Marshall. He was a sore loser, had a bad attitude, and was cocky. None of these qualities were valued by Ms. Thompson, and she didn’t see how he would be of use as they continued to search for the [i]now two[/i] traitors. “Do you have any new information that we need to take under consideration moving forward?” She asked, keeping her tone neutral, and the focus on Kit. It was his responsibility to prove his value, not her responsibility to find a use for him.