Hearing the door open, Dave’s gaze shot upward, and one hand instinctively went to the bag that contained the weapons he had pilfered from Hawtholders. Fortunately, it was only Bransen, and the only thing he was struggling with was a variety of foods that had obviously come out of a vending machine, and Dave’s coffee. He accepted the paper cup quickly, letting it warm his hands before he began to sip it. At Bransen’s comment about it being difficult to drink, Dave haphazardly shrugged. “It grows on you.” He said, and took a large sip before looking over to the assortment of things that Bransen had acquired from the machine. He glanced over the assortment, and then helped himself to the muffin, peeling off the wrapper before drinking a bit more coffee. “Wanna split the poptarts?” He asked, since there was an obvious imbalance between the number of people in the room and the number of items that Bransen had gotten. “Or you can get me a pack of my own.” He grinned. Dave wasn’t in a particularly sour mood that day, even with the strange dreams. Having the time to shower helped him re-center himself a bit, and as he bathed, the dream faded away until he barely remembered more than Bransen talking circles around him, and his dad being in New York. Since neither of these things were false, or particularly noteworthy, he was able to let it go quickly.

After the food was settled, Dave began to get his own wound sorted out, not sure what they would be stopping again in the evening, and whether he would have time to take care of it later. The suit noticed Bransen moving closer to him, and he glanced over to the man before he heard Bransen offer to…do what, exactly? “huh?” He asked, pausing what he was doing long enough for Bransen to take control and push his sleeves up and suggest that he would wrap it instead. 

“That’s alright.” Dave chuckled a little. “I’m not a doctor either.” He said, glancing down at Bransen’s foot. Did the man seriously think that Dave had any medical training whatsoever? As Bransen touched his bare skin, Dave flinched a little, and then immediately scolded himself mentally for flinching do to only the man’s cold fingers. The engineer said that he owed Dave, and the man grinned a little before lifting up his coffee with his free hand. He wasn’t going to protest—if Bransen finally wanted to start pulling his own weight, then that was all fine and good. 

“Are you sure you want to do this?” He asked when he saw Bransen look up at him a bit nervously. “If you would rather just take a shift driving the car--that is fine too.” He suggested. It wasn’t like Bransen needed to sew the wound shut or anything. It was just a matter of dabbing it with disinfectant, drying it, and then placing a clean bandage on top. However, things that seemed easy to Dave were not necessarily going to seem common sense to a ‘learned’ individual. 

Bransen seemed content on continuing though, and Dave humored him by continuing the conversation. “Yea, we can probably get there tonight, but by then the roads will be a bit dangerous, so I would rather wait till morning. I figure we can find one more motel tonight near the city. It has been too many years for me to feel comfortable walking around the streets as late as we would probably be if we rushed. The plan is still the same though, yea? We get new IDs and go to Canada and just…disappear?” Dave wanted to confirm it with Bransen again, even though there had been no information that would sway the decision otherwise. Once Bransen finished with his arm, he would offer to look at the foot once more before beginning to pack up their things. 

“It’s weird, I keep reaching into my pocket to check my phone. I am so used to getting notifications, or even just checking the time…It makes me feel like I am missing something when I don’t. Do you feel like that?” Dave asked, oblivious to the fact that Bransen, in fact, did have a cellular device in his pocket. Of course, Bransen wasn’t using it for the things that Dave was suggesting, but he was misinformed all the same.

“I think we can take the same car there…but if you want to switch it up again, I can go hunting for different plates.” Dave suggested. Unlike Bransen, he didn’t have any problems walking, and now that he had actually gotten some sleep, he didn’t particularly mind doing the leg work. Within an hour the pair would be back on the road, the beginning of another long stretch of driving, and hoping that New York would bring them some sort of peace.

-.-

It was three in the morning when the door to the storage unit finally opened. Melissa Thompson stood there, in a pinstripe suit with her heals that seemed to have a way of avoiding all of the puddles that had formed with the rain. She looked upon the scene with her perfectly manicured nails (underneath a thin set of black gloves) and styled hair, in a way that one might have expected to see from someone going to a business meeting, rather than having just been dragged from bed.

In fact, Melissa had been in bed when she got the message. HILDA had sent a notification to her home device detailing suspicious activity of Davian Tucker’s personal accounts. Hilda had used that piece of information, and completed a search to find out where he was. Unfortunately, both Davian and Kit were revealed to be nowhere near the storage unit. The software then pulled up footage from the unit, finding that Davian had left with their suspect, putting him in the trunk, but Kit had not left. There was no camera that could see inside, but the GPS footage, when lined up with the video, found that Tucker had both of the cellular devices. Two quick withdrawals followed by excessive use at a gas station gave the computer enough data to compute with 70% certainty that the man was running [i]from[/i] Hawthholders, and so Melissa Thompson was summoned. 

If Kit was awake, she would merely gesture to the large black vehicle that waited outside of the unit. She had honestly expected him to be dead, and if he was unconscious, she would step forward into the unit and quickly check her pulse. As had been the case with Tucker’s phone, Thompson had the clean-up crew on speed dial, and they would be called to make sure the unit looked like nothing suspicious had occurred here. Hilda took care of wiping the tapes of the unit, though. The drive back to headquarters wasn’t far, but Thompson didn’t give Kit the chance to say much. There were two large suits that had opened the door for him, and sat on either side. Melissa had been sitting in the front passenger seat, busying herself with giving Hilda updated protocols for the search. Thompson didn’t speak a word to Kit until they were in one of the holding rooms in one of the Hawtholders buildings. She escorted him to the room, which was adorned with only a single table and two chairs. There were cameras, so that Hilda could run scans of his sweat, facial expression, and other body ticks to determine the truth or fallacy of his statements.

Melissa followed Kit inside, and took a seat on the opposite side from Kit. She crossed her legs and slowly pulled off her gloves, laying them on the table beside her before turning to Kit. “Explain to me, Mr. Marshall, the course of events that led to you losing not only your acquired target, but your partner, and the stolen documents that you were originally tasked with returning.” She stated, her words firm and her gaze stern.