Journey Into The Aftermath |✔

Chapter twenty three: The Art of Infiltration

With a violent jolt of a parking job, Nick swerved into an alleyway of a small, out-of-the-way clothing market. The wheels skidded to a halt as Nick flew out of the car promptly.

He jogged to the front of the store and quickly entered looking around as he power-walked to the back. There were people laughing and getting friendly with each other all around him and he took a moment to imagine what it must be like to not live an a world with crazy murderous CEO's and a pocket dimension of spy secrets deadly enough to kill.

Getting his head back in the game, he bought a casual outfit with money he picked off of one of those innocent bystanders he took so much interest in.

He made his way back to the torn up super car parked in the alleyway and dumped the outfit in the back seat, only to jog in the opposite direction on the sidewalk and disappeared around the first turn he could make it to. After that corner he rocketed around several more, distancing himself from Adrian as fast, as far, and as randomly as possible. Once he declared that goal achieved, he took out his modified lock pick and got into some person's Honda which was just a pretty regular looking minivan. With his expertise, he easily hot-wired it after the alarm went off.

He knew he had less than a minute before they were notified through their phone that their car had been jacked, less if they were close enough to hear they ear piercing sound of the wining alarm. Nick ripped out the wires from underneath the dashboard and with a couple sparks ripping together, Nick pushed to start and the car came to life as he sped off into the highway, digitally changing it's license plate to make the car untraceable.

Adrian stepped out of the blue Ferrari in his new outfit; fashionably ripped white and blue jeans, a light blue flannel, and an air-force themed smokey gray leather jacket with gray sneakers. There was even a white Nike baseball cap thrown in there. He checked his watch.

11:30 pm.

He joined the small crowd bustling back and forth in front off the store and easily disappeared with them as he made his way back to where it all began; Nexus, before midnight.

****

~Lance~

"What I would like to know is; where the hell are we going to get three million dollars from?!" Lance shouted back at Stein once he broke the news to him. They were in Stein's office about to enter a one-way shouting contest, but Stein kept his head.

"All we need is one and a half million to let him think we have all of it to give." Stein told him.

"Oh and do you have that just laying around somewhere because if that's the case than we have nothing to worry about," Lance crashed back in his seat thinking that he himself should have been the one to talk to their 'clientele'.

"Look, we have the information we need, we can just go through with the plan and just forget about him, simple." Stein sighed, sure of himself.

"Simple, he says," Lance's temper was rising. "Because he totally won't just rat us out, right."

"He doesn't know who we are."

"He does know that you are the manager of North Wind Labs," Lance shot back. "He even authenticated it to make sure and he is now one search engine away from finding out exactly who you are."

"Either way, he is on our side and he's terrified of me; exactly how you asked me to be," Stein stood up and raked a hand through his hair. "He now thinks that he stepped into a pool of scandal that he could never escape alive."

"Well at least you did one thing right," Lance muttered. "We only have one opportunity and I will be damned if you're the cause of us wasting it."

"I would greatly appreciate it if you started treating me with more respect." Stein demanded, his cool demeanor dipping into something more sinister.