Caeli still sat in the tower, Sam on and off of the phone with his brother to help solve the puzzle that Nate and Sully were trying to solve. He was currently back on the phone when Caeli's instinct kicked in again, much stronger than before.
There were people outside. Shoreliners. She knew it.
She stood up immediately, turning towards the door, Sam noticed the movement and paused his conversation with Nate.
"What's wrong?" He asked, Caeli looked towards him.
"They're here." She answered, pulling out her gun.
"How did they know where to find us?" Sam questioned, Caeli thought on the question for a moment before she realised exactly how, she used the same technique to find her own targets when given a job. She took the phone from Sam's hand.
"Hey Nate, you might want to destroy the phone your using." Caeli stated bluntly.
"Why?"
"They know where we are, Nate. They hacked our phones. Sam and I will meet you, if you come for us I will kill you with my bare hands. Understood?" She asked.
"Alright, see you soon then." Nate hung up and she hoped he was destroying it. Caeli went to drop and step on Sam's phone when it started ringing again, an unknown number was on the screen. She looked up to Sam, a gut feeling telling her to answer.
"Hello?" She asked, waiting for a response.
"Caeli-"
"What do you want, Rafe?" She cut him off, ignoring Sam's look of desperation.
"So you figured out we hacked the phones, it's a little too late though. We already have the pictures, so we'll probably reach the next clue before you do. I would give up now, it would be easiest, safest, for you." Rafe stated
"You mean safest for you." She corrected him pacing around the room, gun still in her prominent hand. The feeling of danger was becoming stronger with each passing minute.
"I have an army, Caeli-"
"You can't hide behind them forever. I was raised as an assassin, taking your army of amateur mercenaries down one by one is going to be fairly easy for me. I've done it before, with people much more skilled than yours. The Order is no joke, and I managed to take them down with a little help. There's four of us, at the moment, and with the Order there was only three." She said, a smile on her face.
"Give up now Caeli, and you get to live." Rafe stated.
"You give up, Rafe, because you're the one I'm going to kill if you don't. If you honestly think you stand a chance against me, you're wrong. Killing you will be like child's play. I think that it's you who needs to contemplate giving up, and you best do it soon." Caeli stated, hanging up and throwing the phone to the ground with such force it shattered. She didn't see Sam's reaction to her words, but that wasn't any of her concern in that moment of time.
The instinctive feeling of danger hit her even harder...
Bomb.
She ran to Sam, grabbing his shoulders.
Please, accept us both.
She melted to the shadows, and by some miracle, she was able to take Sam with her as a bomb hit the tower and set off an explosion large enough to crumble one of the walls. She shadow-walked to them outside of the building, exhaustion taking over her from taking Sam with her as well.
Once she thought they were a safe distance she brought them back to the real world, panting with a gun in one hand and Sam's shoulder still in the other. He had a shocked look on his face, confused and dazed as he looked to Caeli.
"Did you just..." He trailed off as she nodded, still breathing like she had just ran a marathon. "Are you okay?"
"I haven't done that before..." She whispered, letting go of Sam's shoulder and tilting her head back as if it might help her suck in more oxygen.
"How'd you know it would work?" Sam asked next, she turned to look at him.
"I didn't." She answered, realising that her gut feeling had yet to leave. "I had hope." She added, taking the safety off of her pistol and looking around.
"We're still not safe?" Sam asked next, she smirked at him.
"When are we ever?" She had a point, and they both knew that. "We need to start moving." She stated simply, and so they did. Going into these kinds of situations was usually led by the Drakes, but getting back out of them... that was Caeli's specialty. She had saved them from sure capture many times before, Sam knew that she would do so again.
"Wait." She instructed, her hand out in front of Sam as they paused in the marketplace. There was the distant echo of heavy gunfire, and he hoped his brother was okay. Her focus wasn't on those gunshots, but instead was on the road ahead of them where a military vehicle was driving towards them. Actually, the fleet of military vehicles.
"Sam, run. Find something mobile we can steal." She stated simply, raising her gun towards the vehicles. He didn't move confused as to why she was going to take on five, minimum, vehicles with a handgun. She turned to look at him, a predatory look in her eyes that he had seen only at times of high danger like this. "Go." She stated, shooting her first shot and hitting one of the vehicles in it's tyre, making it lose control and crash into another one of the vehicles. Both blew up in flames. "I'll catch up, just give me a minute." She added, looking him in the eyes.
"Promise?" He asked her, needing that childish security.
"I promise." She responded, her hard eyes softened for just a moment before looking back to the vehicles and reassessing the situation. "Go and get us a vehicle, Sam." She repeated, and he ran towards where a group of motorbikes were abandoned once people had run after the explosion. He took one, figuring it would be best for him to drive and for Caeli to shoot. It was easy to start, since the keys had been left in the ignition, and he took it back to where Caeli had been.
The five vehicles were on the road, each in their own way of destruction, but Caeli was nowhere to be found, until he heard gunshots. He took the bike towards the sound and saw her brown hair on top of a building, he pulled up and watched as her head shot in his direction.
She began running towards him. Although, running was a loose term. She sprinted before she would turn into a shadow, intermittently appearing and disappearing to throw off Shoreline. They hadn't seen him yet, and he took the opportunity to steal one of their semi-auto guns from an unsuspecting mercenary who happened to walk in his direction.
Once Caeli eventually made it to him he handed her the gun and she sat on the back of the bike.
"A bike? What kind of protection do we have on a bike?" She asked as he began to take off through the streets of the city.
"None, but we have agility." Sam replied, trying not to look behind him as Caeli turned around to face behind them. "Plus you have free shooting range." Her response was to use that free shooting range, the gun she was using being put to good use and taking down anyone she could see. It wasn't too soon after she began shooting that she stopped.
"I'm out of ammo, I'll shadow to one of the cars, they seem to have plenty of ammo to go around." She told him, before the weighting of the bike felt different. She was gone, and he was out in the open without a gun or protection.
"Shit, shit, shit..." he continued chanting that same word over and over again as he dodged other mercenaries on bikes, vehicles trying to knock him over and any bullets that were heading his way. Soon, the weight of the bike changed again and the sound of a gun was coming from directly behind him again, an immediate feeling of relief washing over his body as each biker around him fell off their bike dead or the engine below them exploded.
"If I run out, there's a big problem." Caeli stated, and Sam spared a look behind him to see a bag hanging off of Caeli's body, filled to the brim with ammo for the semi-auto she was using efficiently. A car exploded behind them, so he turned to face where he was going. "I think I saw Rafe on a vehicle, driving away from this fight. He had Nadine and a kid with him." Caeli told Sam, he thought back to the two years he had spent with Rafe and how that kid seemed to be the most important thing to him. But Caeli didn't know that, she thought that Alcazar had broken him out.
"A kid?" He asked, sounding shocked. It was much easier to lie to someone when you weren't looking at them.
"Yeah... it was strange." She told him, another vehicle exploded. He was starting to remember just how deadly she was, that she knew how to destroy anything with a scary amount of efficiency and take down anyone in a matter of seconds. "Why would Rafe have a kid with him?" She asked, it was rhetorical, as she assumed Sam didn't know the answer.
"I don't know." He replied, just to be safe.
"It doesn't make sense..." She then trailed off, another car exploding behind them. "Oh shit..."
"What?" He asked her, feeling as she shifted to face where they were going.
"Go faster." She said simply.
"I can't really go any faster, Caels." He responded.
"You have to, Sam." She told him, her voice sounding concerned. If she was concerned there was something very wrong.
"Why?"
"Because there's basically a massive military vehicle coming after us, and you really have to understand that I am sort of underestimating the size when I say massive." Caeli responded, Sam looked over his shoulder and saw the gigantic, black vehicle coming towards them. He increased the revs and picked up some more speed, but he wasn't sure if the bike could go any faster than what it was.
"Can't you shoot it down?" He asked her.
"I've seen this type of vehicle before, they are very hard to destroy, especially with something as pitiful as a semi-automatic. We have to outrun it before it starts shooting at us." She told him, but he shook his head.
"This is as fast as we're going to go." He told her, she sighed.
"I really have to do everything myself, don't I?" It seemed that she was asking the question rhetorically, so he didn't respond. "I'll see if shooting at it continuously will do any damage. No matter what you do, don't slow down." She told him, beginning to shoot at the vehicle. She shot out the wheels, but it kept going, so her next aim was the engine. The weakest spot would be the grill, and that was where her focus would need to be.
Round after round was shot into the vehicle, and it only made the engine begin smoking.
"Uh, Caeli?"
"What?" She snapped, continuing to shoot.
"Do you think you could shadow us again?" He asked her.
"I don't know, why?"
"Well we've got another vehicle heading right for us." Sam answered, Caeli turned to look at where they were going and indeed saw another vehicle exceptionally similar to the one still going behind them.
"Fuck." She swore, but he knew that she was already assessing the situation and finding different ways to get out of it with their lives. "I can try, but we need to hit that bridge in case I can't. The river is strong, but we should be able to get out of it as a backup plan." She told him, so he revved the engine again and picked up even more speed, driving towards the second truck and hitting the bridge. He then turned towards the edge of it as Caeli grabbed his shoulder, luckily the shadows accepted them both once more.
They watched as the two trucks screeched to a halt in front of each other, watched as mercenaries tried looking for them, but Caeli was exhausted and had to get them back to normal at a safe distance. She managed to rush them back to the marketplace before she couldn't hold their shadow forms any longer. Sam managed to hijack another motorbike and they rode back to the hotel.
Caeli didn't care for a debrief of the day, she would find out everything important tomorrow.
For now, the shower was calling to her.